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Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.

Colum McCann

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Colum McCann
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: February 28
Academic
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Simply
Juggling
Language
Novels
Require
Difficult
Closer
Stories
Perfection
Right
Short
Novel
Longer

More quotes by Colum McCann

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Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.
Colum McCann
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Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.
Colum McCann
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Pain is not wat you get, it is wat you give.
Colum McCann
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I think it is our job, as writers, to be epic. Epic and tiny at the same time. If you're going to be a fiction writer, why not take on something that means something. In doing this, you must understand that within that epic structure it is the tiny story that is possibly more important.
Colum McCann
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With all respects to heaven, I like it here.
Colum McCann
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I think a good novel can be a doorstop to despair. I also think the real bravery comes with those who prepared to go through that door and look at the world in all its grime and torment, and still find something of value, no matter how small.
Colum McCann
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Sometimes thinking back on things is a mistake arising out of pride, but I guess you live inside a moment for years, move with it and feel it grow, and it sends out roots until it touches everything in sight.
Colum McCann
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If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.
Colum McCann
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I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really. Plot seems vaguely juvenile to me. It's all about language, it's all about how you apply it to the page.
Colum McCann
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I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.
Colum McCann
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The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity.
Colum McCann
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I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world.
Colum McCann
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There are no days more full than those we go back to.
Colum McCann
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Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.
Colum McCann
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I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book
Colum McCann
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He felt for a moment uncreated. Another kind of awake.
Colum McCann
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Women get the short shrift in history. It's been largely written and dictated by men, or at least men believe that we own it, and women have really been in those quieter moments at the edge of history. But, really, they're the ones who are turning the cogs and the wheels and allowing things like the peace process to happen.
Colum McCann
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He said to me once that most of the time people use the word love as just another way to show off they're hungry. The way he said it went something like: Glorify their appetites.
Colum McCann
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I don't know of a greater privilege than being allowed to tell a story, or to listen to a story. They're the only thing we have that can trump life itself.
Colum McCann
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Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.
Colum McCann