I'm much more interested in allowing a story to happen, and people find whatever meaning is in there.

Next quotes

• Colum McCann:

  In a certain way, novelists become unacknowledged historians, because we talk about small, tiny, li

• Colum McCann:

  I think we need stories, and we need to tell the stories over and over and over not only to remind

• Colum McCann:

  I think literature can make familiar the unfamiliar, and the unfamiliar is very much about the disp

• Colum McCann:

  The job of the writer is to look at where he is now and make some sort of emotional sense of it, no

• Colum McCann:

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

• Colum McCann:

  Very seldom in my fiction have I directly used the stories people have told me. I think ripping off

• Colum McCann:

  It's not very fashionable, but I love life, and I believe that things disappear and reappear and no

• Colum McCann:

  Part of me really wants to believe that hope is entirely available to all of us. We don't have to e

• Colum McCann:

  I mean, every novel's a historical novel anyway. But calling something a historical novel seems to

• Colum McCann:

  I don't believe a poet has a better hold on truth or morality than a fiction writer has. And I don'