Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Colum McCann
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: February 28
Academic
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Language
Novels
Difficult
Require
Stories
Closer
Right
Perfection
Short
Novel
Longer
Simply
Juggling
More quotes by Colum McCann
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.
Colum McCann
If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.
Colum McCann
She was forever tilted sideways by the notion that pain was inevitable, chance was cruel, and all human ingenuity should go towards the making of a good cup of tea.
Colum McCann
Words are good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don't function for what things aren't.
Colum McCann
He might have been naive, but he didn't care he said he's rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic.
Colum McCann
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.
Colum McCann
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
About 25 years ago, I took a bicycle across the United States. I soon found out that the greatest item of clothing was the trusty bandanna. There were dozens of uses for a bandanna - as a pot holder, a chain cleaner, a sun shield, a headband, a snot rag, a declaration of Kerouacian intent.
Colum McCann
The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth.
Colum McCann
I write articles, and I do profiles of members of organizations and associations.
Colum McCann
Whatever you say, say nothing.
Colum McCann
Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.
Colum McCann
Where happiness was not a possibility, the illusion of it was always more important.
Colum McCann
I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world.
Colum McCann
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.
Colum McCann
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
I have the most charmed, most - I feel entirely blessed and lucky that I have the life that I have.
Colum McCann
I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.
Colum McCann
One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.
Colum McCann
There are fewer and fewer Jews in Ireland, but we still have one of the most famous Jewish characters in literary history, of course, in Leopold Bloom.
Colum McCann
