Quote

Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.

Colum McCann

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Colum McCann
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: February 28
Academic
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Philosophically
Logically
Ultimately
Impossible
Write
Ever
Writing

More quotes by Colum McCann

Image
Whatever you say, say nothing.
Colum McCann
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world.
Colum McCann
Image
I have the most charmed, most - I feel entirely blessed and lucky that I have the life that I have.
Colum McCann
Image
They told me Corrigan smashed all the bones in his chest when he hit the steering wheel. I thought, Well at least in heaven his Spanish chick'll be able to reach in and grab his heart.
Colum McCann
Image
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
Image
We stumble on, thinks Jaslyn, bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves. It is almost enough.
Colum McCann
Image
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
Image
Pain is not wat you get, it is wat you give.
Colum McCann
Image
He felt for a moment uncreated. Another kind of awake.
Colum McCann
Image
I grew up sort of middle class, safe and suburban.
Colum McCann
Image
The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth.
Colum McCann
Image
I'm of the opinion that the real is imagined and the imagined is quite real. The real is imagined, in the sense that we shape our stories, so anything that even happens on the news gets shaped in a certain way and gets a texture, and that the imagined can be real.
Colum McCann
Image
The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.
Colum McCann
Image
That's what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they are the past.
Colum McCann
Image
I write articles, and I do profiles of members of organizations and associations.
Colum McCann
Image
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
Image
I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.
Colum McCann
Image
There is always room for at least two truths.
Colum McCann