Quotes from Colum McCann

It bothered him to think that the listeners might look at him as a broken down reel, trapped by sameness of his grief. Afterwards he would realize he had left out whole chunks of what he truly wanted to say.

Nothing, he knew, was ever free.

The years tumbled on. They had kids: one two three four. Beauties. Whippersnappers. A little wild, all of them.

It's a tragedy that we need to continually prove that we are human beings.

The Nakba. Or the Catastrophe. Or the Hejira. Also known as the Exodus, the Rape, the Cataclysm, the Forcing, the Night We Blackened Our Faces and Left.

Aber das ist das Problem mit dem Alter: Man hat ein Gefühl, aber kein Datum. Und wenn man das Datum ausgräbt, verliert man das Gefühl.

The river is not where it begins or ends, but right in the middle point, anchored by what has happened and what is to arrive.

A good novel can be a doorstop to despair.

In 1974, Mahmoud Darwish wrote Yasser Arafat's speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations: Today I have come bearing an olive branch in one hand and a freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. 346 I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.

We have always absorbed our own disintegration.

not many follicles among the oracles.

considered amicable because the proper divisors of 220 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20, 22, 44, 55 and 110 which, when added together, reach 284. And the proper divisors of 284 are 1, 2, 4, 71 and 142, of which the sum is 220. They are the only amicable numbers under 1,000.

The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create.

She lasted three months, then passed on a September day when everything seemed split open with sunlight.

The only interesting thing is to live.

She was tall, exotic, so very young she seemed to flutter.

He wondered if that was what the moment of death was about, the noise of the world and then the ease away from it.

struck him early on that people were afraid of the enemy because they were terrified that their lives might get diluted, that they might lose themselves in the tangle of knowing each other.

Back home, he sleeps in Clarence's bed. Then he moves across and arranges the pillows beside the ghost of his wife. All three of them lie down together. The pulse of Louis Armstrong sounds out from the record player, the notes moving tenderly through his torment.

Het was krankzinnig hoe klein de wereld in wezen was.

So often, thought Rami, the ordinary can save us.

Het was makkelijk genoeg om een programma te schrijven dat de doden zou ordenen, zei hij, maar eigenlijk wilde hij een programma schrijven dat de zin van het sterven kon verklaren. Dat was de verre toekomst. Ooit zouden de computers alle grote geesten bijeenbrengen. Over dertig, veertig, honderd jaar. Als we elkaar voor die tijd niet opblazen. We zitten op het topje van de menselijke kennis, mamma.

one of the principal qualities of pain is that it demands to be defeated first, then understood.

When he returned from the war he said to Nurit that he wasn't sure that all of him had come home.