01c. 2009 ADAll this miraculous hatred. Christ, a man can't eat his breakfast for filling his belly full of it.Colum McCann / quote ↗
02c. 2009 ADHarry had worked his way through the American Dream and come to the conclusion that is was composed of a good lunch and a deep red wine that could soar.Colum McCann / quote ↗
04c. 2009 ADIt's strange but as I grow older, I find myself developing more optimism. I keep inching toward the point where I believe that it's more difficult to have hope than it is to embrace cynicism. In the deep dark end, there's no point unless we have at least a modicum of hope. We trawl our way through the darkness hoping to find a pinpoint of light. But isn't it remarkable that the cynics of this world—the politicians, the corporations, the squinty-eyed critics—seem to think that they have a claim on intelligence? They seem to think that it's cooler, more intellectually engaging, to be miserable, that there's some sort of moral heft in cynicism. But I think a good novel can be a doorstop to despair. I also think the real bravery comes with those who are prepared to go through that door and look at the world in all its grime and torment, and still find something of value, no matter how small.Colum McCann / quote ↗
05c. 2009 ADI’m not interested in blind optimism, but I’m very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, ‘This is not enough.’ But it takes time, more time than we can sometimes imagine, to get there. And sometimes we don’t.Colum McCann / quote ↗
07c. 2009 ADLiterature can stop my heart and execute me for a moment, allow me to become someone else.Colum McCann / quote ↗
08c. 2009 ADThere are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water--it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream. I was on the bottom bunk again, listening to his slumber verses. The flap of our childhood letter box opened. Opening the door to the spray of sea.Colum McCann / quote ↗
09c. 2009 ADThings in life have no real beginning, though our stories about them always do.Colum McCann / quote ↗
10c. 2009 ADThe true nature of a democracy is its ability to say yes when even the powerful say noColum McCann / quote ↗
11c. 2009 ADI 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.Colum McCann / quote ↗
12c. 2009 ADGive life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.Colum McCann / quote ↗
13c. 2009 ADEven if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was non ov those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.Colum McCann / quote ↗
14c. 2009 ADHis body, his mind, his soul, had, for years, served only for the profit of others. He had his own people to whom he was pledged. Three million. They were the currency of his freedom.Colum McCann / quote ↗
15c. 2009 ADThe Irish were poor, but not enslaved. He had come here to hack away at the ropes that held American slavery in place. Sometimes it withered him just to keep his mind steady. He was aware that the essence of proper intelligence was the embrace of contradiction. And the recognition of complexity was to be balanced against the need for simplicity. He was still a slave. Fugitive. If he returned to Boston he could be kidnapped at any time, taken south, strapped to a tree, whipped. His owners. They would make a spectacle of his fame. They had tried to silence him for many years already. No longer. He had been given a chance to speak out against what had held him in chains. And he would continue to do so until the links lay in pieces at his feet.Colum McCann / quote ↗
17c. 2009 ADHe'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.Colum McCann / quote ↗
19c. 2009 ADThey say ol’ man Beach is crazy. And maybe he is. But he goes ahead anyways. He’s the sort of man who knows the only things worth doing are the things might break your heart.Colum McCann / quote ↗
20c. 2009 ADThe simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.Colum McCann / quote ↗
21c. 2009 ADOne of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.He had a theory about it. It happened, and re-happened, because it was a city uninterested in history. Strange things occurred precisely because there was no necessary regard for the past. The city lived in a sort of everyday present. It had no need to believe in itself as a London, or an Athens, or even a signifier of the New World, like a Sydney, or a Los Angeles. No, the city couldn’t care less about where it stood. He had seen a T-shirt once that said: NEW YORK FUCKIN’ CITY. As if it were the only place that ever existed and the only one that ever would.New York kept going forward precisely because it didn’t give a good goddamn about what it had left behind. It was like the city that Lot left, and it would dissolve if it ever began looking backward over its own shoulder. Two pillars of salt. Long Island and New Jersey.Colum McCann / quote ↗
22c. 2009 ADOne of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.Colum McCann / quote ↗
23c. 2009 ADI had enough electricity in my booty to jump-start the whole of New York City.Colum McCann / quote ↗
24c. 2009 ADAnd there are moments that I would like to know what might have happened if it hadn't happened, and why it happened the way it did, and what it might have taken to prevent it from happening.Colum McCann / quote ↗
