Quote

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

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
Thinking
Take
Writer
Must
Fiction
Mean
Within
Important
Story
Epic
Going
Understand
Possibly
Something
Means
Tiny
Time
Jobs
Structure
Think
Stories
Writers

More quotes by Colum McCann

Image
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
Image
I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.
Colum McCann
Image
There are no days more full than those we go back to.
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
There is always room for at least two truths.
Colum McCann
Image
One look at each other and it was immediately understood that they both needed a clean slate,,, The obliteration of memory.
Colum McCann
Image
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
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
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
The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.
Colum McCann
Image
A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.
Colum McCann
Image
Where happiness was not a possibility, the illusion of it was always more important.
Colum McCann
Image
He felt for a moment uncreated. Another kind of awake.
Colum McCann
Image
She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.
Colum McCann
Image
She takes another long haul, lets the smoke settle in her lungs-- she has heard somewhere that cigarettes are good for grief. One long drag and you forget how to cry. The body too busy dealing with the poison.
Colum McCann
Image
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
Image
Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years
Colum McCann
Image
One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.
Colum McCann
Image
The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.
Colum McCann
Image
The point of flight. To get rid of oneself. That was reason enough to fly.
Colum McCann