Quotes by Colum McCann

“Where happiness was not a possibility, the illusion of it was always more important.”

“Pain's nothing. Pains what you give, not what you get.”

“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 ...”

“I'm only telling you on the truth," he said. "If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.”

“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.”

“We stumble on, thinks Jaslyn, bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves. It is almost enough.”

“They told me Corrigan smashed all the bones in his chest when he hit the steering wheel. I thought, Well at least in heaven his Spanish chick'll be able to reach in and grab his heart.”

“Rather 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.”

“Gloria laughed at them and said that shed overtaken grief a long time ago, that she was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she sai...”

“We have all heard of these things before. The love letter arriving as the teacup falls. The guitar striking up as the last breath sounds out. I don't attribute it to God or to sentiment. Perhaps it...”

“That's what I like about God. You get to know Him by His occasional absence.”

“Our father came to sleep in our house that night. He carried a small suitcase with a black mourning suit and a pair of polished shoes. Corrigan stopped him as he made his way up the stairs. 'Where ...”

“We seldom know what echo our actions will find, but our stories will most certainly outlast us.”

“She wanted to tell him so much, 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 yo...”

“It was as if they wanted to take their older bodies and put their younger hearts inside.”

“The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth.”

“Memory has a heavy backspin, yet its still impossible to land exactly where we took off.”

“We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, b...”

“One look at each other and it was immediately understood that they both needed a clean slate,,, The obliteration of memory.”

“Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.”