Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.
Colum McCannNovels 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 McCannPeople are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.
Colum McCannThe tunnels of our lives connect, coming to daylight at the oddest moments, and then plunge us into the dark again. We return to the lives of those who have gone before us, a perplexing möbius strip until we come home, eventually, to ourselves.
Colum McCannNo 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 in some strange middle point, then trying so hard to tell it all, to have it all make sense, logical and final.
Colum McCann