So much of her time spent like this: dreaming up things to say and never quite saying them. Colum McCann More Quotes by Colum McCann More Quotes From Colum McCann We shape ourselves by our imaginative reach. Colum McCann imaginative shapes She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse. Colum McCann endurance pain people And I suddenly think, as I look across the table at him, that these are the days as they will be. This is the future as we see it. The swerve and the static. The confidence and the doubt. Colum McCann doubt looks thinking I was fascinated by the lack of a word for a parent who has lost a child. We have no word in English. I thought for sure there'd be a word in Irish but there is none. And then I looked in several other languages and could not find one, until I found the word Sh'khol in Hebrew. I'm still not sure why so many languages don't have a word for this sort of bereavement, this shadowing. Colum McCann bereavement parent children You cannot read any image of the World Trade Center without thinking of 9/11. Colum McCann trade world thinking He felt for a moment uncreated. Another kind of awake. Colum McCann awake moments kind The city was bigger than its buildings, bigger than its inhabitants too. It had its own nuances. It accepted whatever came its way, the crime and the violence and the little shocks of good that crawled out from underneath the everyday. Colum McCann everyday cities littles That was the sort of everyday love I had to learn to contend with: if you grow up with it, it's hard to think you'll ever match it. I used to think it was difficult for children of folks who really loved each other, hard to get out from under that skin because sometimes it's just so comfortable you don't want to have to develop your own. Colum McCann growing-up children thinking One look at each other and it was immediately understood that they both needed a clean slate,,, The obliteration of memory. Colum McCann clean memories looks ...and it strikes her, as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether. Colum McCann strikes borders hatred I know already that I will return to this day whenever I want to. I can bid it alive. Preserve it. There is a still point where the present, the now, winds around itself, and nothing is tangled. The river is not where it begins or ends, but right in the middle point, anchored by what has happened and what is to arrive. Colum McCann tangled rivers wind What was a life anyway? An accumulation of small shelves of incident. Colum McCann shelves accumulation incidents If you sort of see yourself writing into a space that you don't always recognize, you sometimes learn things that you knew, but weren't entirely aware of. It's very liberating for a writer to go into a space where she or he has not gone before, because, instead of being a tourist, you're like an explorer now, and you're sort of lost in this new idea. Colum McCann space writing ideas The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity. Colum McCann luxury vanity giving-up 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 poison grief long A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader. Colum McCann finished reader book If you have a structure beforehand, you're sort of stuffing your story into a pre-assembled box. You don't want that to happen. What you want in your writing is to have a sort of wildness that occurs. And then, out of the wildness, a structure emerges. Colum McCann stories want writing The Irish are great for their tunes, but all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy. Colum McCann tunes He didn't like it all that much when he first came - all the rubbish and the rush - but it was growing on him, it wasn't half bad. Coming to the city was like entering a tunnel, he said, and finding to your surprise that the light at the end didn't matter; sometimes in fact the tunnel made the light tolerable. Colum McCann tunnels light cities She wanted to tell him so mach, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. Colum McCann army running men
