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
Ultimately
Impossible
Write
Ever
Writing
Philosophically
Logically

More quotes by Colum McCann

Image
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
Image
...and it strikes her, as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether.
Colum McCann
Image
One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.
Colum McCann
Image
Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.
Colum McCann
Image
We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, but we can never really find it, only its memory, the faintest imprint of what really was, what it meant.
Colum McCann
Image
A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.
Colum McCann
Image
There are no days more full than those we go back to.
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
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
Image
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
Image
She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse.
Colum McCann
Image
If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.
Colum McCann
Image
Memory has a heavy backspin, yet it’s still impossible to land exactly where we took off.
Colum McCann
Image
I write articles, and I do profiles of members of organizations and associations.
Colum McCann
Image
We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.
Colum McCann
Image
I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.
Colum McCann
Image
The world does not turn without moments of grace. Who cares how small.
Colum McCann
Image
Where happiness was not a possibility, the illusion of it was always more important.
Colum McCann
Image
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
Image
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