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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
Short
Novel
Longer
Simply
Juggling
Language
Novels
Difficult
Require
Stories
Closer
Right
Perfection

More quotes by Colum McCann

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I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world.
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The world does not turn without moments of grace. Who cares how small.
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I'm not so sure that I can teach people how to, you know, write dialogue or create plot or anything like that. But if I can get them and grab them by the scruff of the neck and say, you can do this, and if I see that fire in their eyes, that's when I think I know a writer.
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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.
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It had never occurred to me before but everything in New York is built upon another thing, nothing is entirely by itself, each thing as strange as the last, and connected.
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The job of the writer is to look at where he is now and make some sort of emotional sense of it, not only for that moment but for years to come.
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Let this be a lesson to us all, said the preacher. You will be walking someday in the dark and the truth will come shining through, and behind you will be a life that you never want to see again.
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This is not my life. These are not my cobwebs. This is not the darkness I was designed for.
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The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.
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There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface. There is, I think, a fear of love. There is a fear of love.
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Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.
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I'm a complete and utter fiction. Then again, we all are.
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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.
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The point of flight. To get rid of oneself. That was reason enough to fly.
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The Irish are great for their tunes, but all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy.
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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.
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Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.
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...and it strikes her, as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether.
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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.
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Part of me really wants to believe that hope is entirely available to all of us. We don't have to embrace it. It would be sentimental and silly to say that we all need it, but it is absolutely available to all of us.
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