Colum McCann citations

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: Miró, Miró, on the Wall

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here
Contexte: We have all heard of these things before. The love letter arriving as the teacup falls. The guitar striking up as the last breath sounds out. I don't attribute it to God or to sentiment. Perhaps it's chance. Or perhaps chance is just another way to try to convince ourselves that we are valuable.

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: Miró, Miró, on the Wall
Contexte: She recognized a new depth in him, a candor. The war was about vanity, he said. It was about old men who couldn't look in the mirror anymore and so they sent the young out to die. War was a get-together of the vain. They wanted it simple - hate your enemy, know nothing of him. It was, he claimed, the most un-American of wars, no idealism behind it, only about defeat.

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here
Contexte: Hours and hours of insanity and escape. The projects were a victim of theft and wind. The downdrafts made their own weather. Plastic bags caught on the gusts of summer wind. Old domino players sat in the courtyard, playing underneath the flying litter. The sound of the plastic bags was like rifle fire. If you watched the rubbish for a while you could tell the exact shape of the wind. Perhaps in a way it was alluring, like little else around it: whole, bright, slapping curlicues and large figure eights, helixes and whorls and corkscrews. Sometimes a bit of plastic caught against a pipe or touched the top of the chain-link fence and backed away gracelessly, like it had been warned. The handles came together and the bag collapsed. There were no tree branches to be caught on. One boy from a neighboring flat stuck a lineless fishing pole out the window but he didn't catch any. The bags often stayed up in one place, as if they were contemplating the whole gray scene, and then would take a sudden dip, a polite curtsy, and away.

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here
Contexte: I knew then that it would end badly, her and Corrigan, these children. Someone or other was going to get torn asunder. And yet why shouldn't they fall in love, if even just for a short while? Why shouldn't Corrigan live his life in the body that was hurting him, giving up in places? Why shouldn't he have a moment of release from this God of his? It was a torture shop for him, worrying about the world, having to deal with intricacies when what he really wanted was to be ordinary and do the simple thing.Yet nothing was simple, certainly not simplification. Poverty, chastity, obedience — he had spent his life in fealty to them, but was unarmed when they turned against him.

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Let the Great World Spin Forever Down
Contexte: The core reason for it all was beauty. Walking was a divine delight. Everything was rewritten when he was up in the air. New things were possible with the human form. It went beyond equilibrium.
He felt for a moment uncreated. Another kind of awake.

Source: Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book Three: Centavos

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book Three: All Hail and Hallelujah

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: A Fear of Love

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Source: Zoli

Source: Let the Great World Spin