Quote

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

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
Thing
Way
People
Eventually
Listen
Stories

More quotes by 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
People think they know the mystery of living in your skin. They don't. There's no one who knows except the person who carts it around her own self.
Colum McCann
Image
One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.
Colum McCann
Image
He felt for a moment uncreated. Another kind of awake.
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 Irish are great for their tunes, but all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy.
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
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
If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.
Colum McCann
Image
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
Image
There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface. There is, I think, a fear of love. There is a fear of love.
Colum McCann
Image
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
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
Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.
Colum McCann
Image
Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.
Colum McCann
Image
Yet she likes complications. She wishes she could turn and say: I like people who unbalance me.
Colum McCann
Image
The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.
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
The point of flight. To get rid of oneself. That was reason enough to fly.
Colum McCann
Image
Whatever you say, say nothing.
Colum McCann