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A lot of people think that writers are much cleverer than they actually are. No, they're not. But they're emotionally clever, and they go into a character, and they feel something that they weren't entirely aware of beforehand.

Colum McCann

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Colum McCann
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: February 28
Academic
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Much
Entirely
Something
Clever
Think
Aware
Thinking
Writers
People
Actually
Cleverer
Character
Beforehand
Feel
Emotionally
Feels
Weren

More quotes by Colum McCann

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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.
Colum McCann
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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.
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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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
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I’m not interested in blind optimism, but I’m very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, ‘This is not enough.’ But it takes time, more time than we can sometimes imagine, to get there. And sometimes we don’t.
Colum McCann
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Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.
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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I'm only telling you on the truth, he said. If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.
Colum McCann
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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
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I'm a complete and utter fiction. Then again, we all are.
Colum McCann
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One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.
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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I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.
Colum McCann
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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
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Yet she likes complications. She wishes she could turn and say: I like people who unbalance me.
Colum McCann
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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
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Whatever you say, say nothing.
Colum McCann
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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
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I grew up sort of middle class, safe and suburban.
Colum McCann
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The Irish are great for their tunes, but all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy.
Colum McCann