Colum McCann Quotes

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

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Love

• I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Honesty, Truth

• Everything was fabulous, even our breakdowns.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fabulous

• With all respects to heaven, I like it here.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Heaven

• He realized that he had thought only about the first step, never imagined the last.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Realized

• Words are good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don’t function for what things aren’t.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Words

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

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Stories

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

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Courage

• He looks like the sort of man who can’t afford to leave, and doesn’t want to stay, and so he is doing both at once.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Leave

• A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Book

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

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Literature

• Pain is not what you get, it is what you give.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Pain

• All the lives we could live, all the people we would never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Live

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

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Silence

• But being rational about it didn’t cure it.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Rational

• An optimist is a braver cynic.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Optimist

• There was something of the beautiful failure about her.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Failure

• If you think you know all the secrets, you think you know all the cures.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think

• At a certain stage every single thing can be a sign.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Stage

• Every man with his own peculiar vice. His will hardly rock heaven or hell.

  Colum McCann

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Man

Colum McCann (41)

Birth:	28th February, 1965
Nationality:	American, Irish
Profession:	Writer

About

Colum McCann is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He was born in Dublin, Ireland and now lives in New York. He is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing in the Master of Fine Arts program at Hunter College, New York.

Related Authors

• J.D. Stroube
• Jhonen Vasquez
• Caskie Stinnett
• Peter Sellers
• Susan Trott
• George Woodcock
• Guy de Maupassant
• Avery Aster
• Rebecca Serle
• Ntozake Shange

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 25th February

Births

• 1935 - Tony Campolo
• 1968 - Lesley Boone
• 1841 - Pierre Auguste Renoir
• 1928 - Larry Gelbart
• 1746 - Charles Cotesworth Pinckney

Deaths

• 1878 - Townsend Harris
• 2005 - Peter Benenson
• 1852 - Thomas Moore
• 1983 - Tennessee Williams
• 1994 - Marvin J. Ashton