327 Quotes by Colum McCann

The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth.

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

He's at ease, his body sculpted to the music, his shoulder searching the other shoulder, his right toe knowing the left knee, the height, the depth, the form, the control, the twist of his wrist, the bend of his elbow, the tilt of his neck, notes digging into arteries, and he is in the air now, forcing the legs up beyond muscular memory, one last press of the thighs, an elongation of form, a loosening of human contour, he goes higher and is skyheld.

The perfection is not so much in the performance as in the journey towards it. This is the joy. You must burn!

He might have been naive, but he didn't care; he said he's rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic.

The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity.

I could tell from Anna's 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.

She read in a high African singsong that I guess came down along the line from Ghana long ago, something that she made American, but tied us to a home we’d never seen.

The quiet lines matter as much as the noisy ones.