Colum McCann People Quotations

People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect.

He said to me once that most of the time people use the word love as just another way to show off they're hungry. The way he said it went something like: Glorify their appetites.

Yet she likes complications. She wishes she could turn and say: I like people who unbalance me.

People think they know the mystery of living in your skin. They don't. There's no one who knows except the person who carts it around her own self.

Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.

Goodness was more difficult than evil. Evil men knew that more than good men. That's why they became evil. That's why it stuck with them. Evil was for those who could never reach the truth. It was a mask for stupidity and lack of love. Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.

She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse.

Very seldom in my fiction have I directly used the stories people have told me. I think ripping off people's lives in fiction is dangerous. It also lacks imagination.

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