Colum McCann
Colum McCann
Colum McCannis an Irish writer of literary fiction. He was born in Dublin, Ireland and now lives in New York. He is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing in the Master of Fine Arts program at Hunter College, New York with fellow novelists Peter Carey and Tea Obreht, and has visited many universities and colleges all over the world...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth28 February 1965
CountryIreland
literature stories life-is
Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.
dark shining lessons
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.
order trying stones
He told me once that there was no better faith than a wounded faith and sometimes I wonder if that is what he was doing all along --trying to wound his faith in order to test it--and I was just another stone in the way of his God.
tired grieving heaven
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.
thinking self people
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.
giving long alive
Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.
real thinking doors
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.
thinking goes-on left
There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.
home dark tunnels
The tunnels of our lives connect, coming to daylight at the oddest moments, and then plunge us into the dark again. We return to the lives of those who have gone before us, a perplexing möbius strip until we come home, eventually, to ourselves.
grace doe world
The world does not turn without moments of grace. Who cares how small.
people matter sentimental
Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.
mistake moving pride
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.
beautiful silence awful
It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.
memories always-trying water
There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.