327 Quotes by Colum McCann

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

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.

Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years

Part of me really wants to believe that hope is entirely available to all of us. We don't have to embrace it. It would be sentimental and silly to say that we all need it, but it is absolutely available to all of us.

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

We seldom know what we're hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, but we can never really find it, only its memory, the faintest imprint of what really was, what it meant.

I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world.

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.

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.