We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, but we can never really find it, only its memory, the faintest imprint of what really was, what it meant.

Colum McCann

Categorized in : Firsts Memories Hearing

The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.

Colum McCann

chaos inspirational world

The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.

Colum McCann

alive love-is beautiful

I write about what I know; and I write about things that are new to me, and that I didn't know before.

Colum McCann

knows writing

I think it is our job, as writers, to be epic. Epic and tiny at the same time. If you're going to be a fiction writer, why not take on something that means something. In doing this, you must understand that within that epic structure it is the tiny story that is possibly more important.

Colum McCann

jobs mean thinking

Goodness was more difficult than evil. Evil men knew that more than good men. That's why they became evil. That's why it stuck with them. Evil was for those who could never reach the truth. It was a mask for stupidity and lack of love. 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.

Colum McCann

evil men people

I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.

Colum McCann

ordinary-life ordinary thinking

It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.

Colum McCann

awful silence beautiful

I love short stories. They're like small imploding universes. They are very tightly bound and controlled. I'd been wanting to write one for ages but just got tangled up in novels. The novel is the same in the sense that it is also a universe, but it explodes outwards with all that shrapnel going in several different directions. I don't see too much difference in the forms except for the fact that writing short stories is like sprinting rather than long-distance running.

Colum McCann

short-love distance running

I’m not interested in blind optimism, but I’m very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, ‘This is not enough.’ But it takes time, more time than we can sometimes imagine, to get there. And sometimes we don’t.

Colum McCann

optimism darkness sometimes

She's always thought that one of the beauties of New York is that you can be from anywhere and within moments of landing its yours.

Colum McCann

landing moments new-york

What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of the everyday... He consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. He wanted, quite simply, for the world to be a better place, and he was in the habit of hoping for it.

Colum McCann

light real darkness

Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.

Colum McCann

language perfection stories

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.

Colum McCann

tired grieving heaven

There are no days more full than those we go back to.

Colum McCann

Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.

Colum McCann

long-ago simple heart

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

stories people way

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.

Colum McCann

always-trying water memories

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.

Colum McCann

pride mistake moving

We have to admire the world for not ending on us.

Colum McCann

admire world

I'm a complete and utter fiction. Then again, we all are.

Colum McCann

fiction