Colum McCann: Trending quotes (page 2)

“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.”

“Everything was fabulous, even our breakdowns.”

“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.”

“There 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.”

“… it was necessary to love silence, but before you could love silence you had to have noise.”

“With all respects to heaven, I like it here.”

“I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.”

“There are no days more full than those we go back to.”

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

“Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same.”

“The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.”

“Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.”

“It struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so you can know where you came from.”

“Where happiness was not a possibility, the illusion of it was always more important.”

“Let this be a lesson to us all, said the preacher. You will be walking someday in the dark and the truth will come shining through, and behind you will be a life that you never want to see again.”

“He realized that he had thought only about the first step, never imagined the last.”

“If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.”

“Memory has a heavy backspin, yet it’s still impossible to land exactly where we took off.”

“The stars looked like nail heads in the sky--pull a few of them out and the darkness would fall.”