327 Quotes by Colum McCann

Freedom was a word that everyone mentioned but none of us knew.

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

I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they’re the things that matter.

I have nobody left to whom I can tell the story.

She’s always thought that one of the beauties of New York is that you can be from anywhere and within moments of landing its yours.

She likes the word mother and all the complications it brings. She isn’t interested in true or birth or adoptive or whatever other series of mothers there are in the world. Gloria was her mother. Jazzlyn was too. They were like strangers on a porch, Gloria and Jazzlyn, with the evening sun going down: they just sat there together and neither could say what the other one knew, so they just kept quiet, and watched the day descend. One of them said good night, while the other waited.

Everything falls into the hands of music eventually. The only thing that ever rescued me was listening to a big voice. There are years accumulated in a sound.

We have all heard of these things before. The love letter arriving as the teacup falls. The guitar striking up as the last breath sounds out. I don’t attribute it to God or to sentiment. Perhaps it’s a chance. Or perhaps chance is just another way to try to convince ourselves that we are valuable.

So many times people would come up to him after his lectures and say that they wished there were more like him. What do you mean? he would ask. Immediately they would realize what they had said and drop their heads. As if he didn’t encounter people like himself every single day, at every single angle. As if he were the only sort of Palestinian they could stomach.