Quotes by Colum McCann

Theres a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after weve left it.

Nothing was simple, certainly not simplification.

The world does not turn without moments of grace. Who cares how small.

...and it strikes her, as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether. 

All this miraculous hatred. Christ, a man cant eat his breakfast for filling his belly full of it.

Harry had worked his way through the American Dream and come to the conclusion that is was composed of a good lunch and a deep red wine that could soar.

An optimist is a braver cynic.

Its strange but as I grow older, I find myself developing more optimism. I keep inching toward the point where I believe that its more difficult to have hope than it is to embrace cynicism. In the deep dark end, theres no point unless we have at least a modicum of hope. We trawl our way through the darkness hoping to find a pinpoint of light. But isnt it remarkable that the cynics of this world—the politicians, the corporations, the squinty-eyed critics—seem to think that they have a claim on intelligence? They seem to think that its cooler, more intellectually engaging, to be miserable, that theres some sort of moral heft in cynicism. But I think a good novel can be a doorstop to despair. I also think the real bravery comes with those who are prepared to go through that door and look at the world in all its grime and torment, and still find something of value, no matter how small.

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.

A good novel can be a doorstop to despair.

Literature can stop my heart and execute me for a moment, allow me to become someone else.

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. I was on the bottom bunk again, listening to his slumber verses. The flap of our childhood letter box opened. Opening the door to the spray of sea.

Things in life have no real beginning, though our stories about them always do.

The true nature of a democracy is its ability to say yes when even the powerful say no

I could tell from Annas face that she had already told him about dancing in Saint Petersburg and that the memory weighed on her heavily. What monstrous things, our pasts, especially when they have been lovely. She had told a secret and now had the sadness of wondering how much deeper she might dig in order to keep the first secret fed.

Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.

Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didnt matter -- it was non ov those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.

His body, his mind, his soul, had, for years, served only for the profit of others. He had his own people to whom he was pledged. Three million. They were the currency of his freedom.

The Irish were poor, but not enslaved. He had come here to hack away at the ropes that held American slavery in place. Sometimes it withered him just to keep his mind steady. He was aware that the essence of proper intelligence was the embrace of contradiction. And the recognition of complexity was to be balanced against the need for simplicity. He was still a slave. Fugitive. If he returned to Boston he could be kidnapped at any time, taken south, strapped to a tree, whipped. His owners. They would make a spectacle of his fame. They had tried to silence him for many years already. No longer. He had been given a chance to speak out against what had held him in chains. And he would continue to do so until the links lay in pieces at his feet.

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