327 Quotes by Colum McCann

Once I thought we could never solve our conflict, we would continue hating each other forever, but it is not written anywhere that we have to go on killing each other. The hero makes a friend of his enemy. That’s my duty. Don’t thank me for doing it. That’s all it is, my duty. When they killed my daughter they killed my fear. I can do anything now.

Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn’t matter – it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.

What was life anyway? An accumulation of small shelves if incident. Stacked at odd angles to each other.

What monstrous things, our pasts, especially when they have been lovely.

Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you’re lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who’ve been around awhile know it’s just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it’s never even there in the first place.

Oh, the mind itself is a deep, deep well. Lower me down and let me touch water.

Rami often felt that there were nine or ten Israelis inside him, fighting. The conflicted one. The shamed one. The enamored one. The bereaved one. The one who marveled at the blimp’s invention. The one who knew the blimp was watching. The one watching back. The one who wanted to be watched. The anarchist. The protester. The one sick and tired of all the seeing.

Even if you’re going to die, you might as well die pretty.

His theme was happiness – what it is and what it might not have been, where he might find it and where it might have disappeared.