Colum McCann Quotes & Sayings

“I don't believe the world's a particularly beautiful place, but I do believe in redemption.”

“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.”

“Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.”

“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.'”

“You cannot read any image of the World Trade Center without thinking of 9/11.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.”

“I grew up sort of middle class, safe and suburban.”