This is not my life. These are not my cobwebs. This is not the darkness I was designed for. Colum McCann More Quotes by Colum McCann More Quotes From Colum McCann I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty. Colum McCann honesty I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book Colum McCann taken mean book Good days, they come around the oddest corners. Colum McCann corners good-day That's what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they are the past. Colum McCann mother writing son I have different books for different times of the day, let alone different seasons of the year! Colum McCann different book years It is not fashionable anymore, I suppose, to have a regard for one's mother in the way my brother and I had then, in the mid-1950s, when the noise outside the window was mostly wind and sea chime. Colum McCann brother mother wind Pain's nothing. Pain's what you give, not what you get. Colum McCann pain giving I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really. Plot seems vaguely juvenile to me. It's all about language, it's all about how you apply it to the page. Colum McCann rude sound character I write articles, and I do profiles of members of organizations and associations. Colum McCann organization association writing The job of the writer is to look at where he is now and make some sort of emotional sense of it, not only for that moment but for years to come. Colum McCann emotional jobs years 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 rags united-states years I have the most charmed, most - I feel entirely blessed and lucky that I have the life that I have. Colum McCann lucky blessed feels Life must pass through difficulty in order to achieve any modicum of beauty. Colum McCann difficulty achieve order I don't believe the world's a particularly beautiful place, but I do believe in redemption. Colum McCann place beautiful believe world It's not very fashionable, but I love life, and I believe that things disappear and reappear and nothing ever solidifies, no matter how middle-class, housebroken, staid, and solitary someone's life seems to be. That, I think, is what I'm writing about. Colum McCann love-life love life believe I'm much more interested in allowing a story to happen, and people find whatever meaning is in there. Colum McCann meaning find story people I think literature can make familiar the unfamiliar, and the unfamiliar is very much about the dispossessed, and so the value of literature seems to me to go into the stories that not everybody wants to tell. Colum McCann value think me literature The further away we got from 9/11, the more I wanted to find some way to recover. I wanted to talk about the more anonymous corners of the city, because I think it's very important that not all of that anger was turned to revenge. Colum McCann city think anger revenge In a certain way, novelists become unacknowledged historians, because we talk about small, tiny, little anonymous moments that won't necessarily make it into the history books. Colum McCann small moments history way When I come home, I say I'm coming home to Dublin. When I'm in Dublin, I say I'm going home to New York. I'm sort of a man of two countries. Colum McCann new man going-home home
