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
dream time-spent
So much of her time spent like this: dreaming up things to say and never quite saying them.
dad involved journalism local matches reports time twelve written wrote
I'd been involved in journalism for a long time - my dad's a journalist, he's written many books, and when I was twelve years old I wrote reports on local football matches for the newspapers.
moments time toward
I think we're moving toward moments of grace and understanding. And I think these things take time.
clarity experience remind stories time
I think we need stories, and we need to tell the stories over and over and over not only to remind us, but to be able to have that clarity of experience that changes us, so that we know who we are now because of who we have been at some other time.
hatred borders strikes
...and it strikes her, as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether.
new-york cities ordinary-days
One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.
perfect people half
People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.
heart care might
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.
sometimes function
Words are good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don't function for what things aren't.
math heaven cost
You can count the dead, but you can't count the cost. We've got no math for Heaven...
thinking silence littles
We stumble on, thinks Jaslyn, bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves. It is almost enough.
loneliness trying world
No shame in saying that I felt a loneliness drifting through me. Funny how it was, everyone perched in their own little world with the deep need to talk, each person with their own tale, beginning in some strange middle point, then trying so hard to tell it all, to have it all make sense, logical and final.
pain giving
Pain is not wat you get, it is wat you give.
people use way
He said to me once that most of the time people use the word love as just another way to show off they're hungry. The way he said it went something like: Glorify their appetites.