Colum McCann

The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.

Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you're lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who've been around awhile know it's just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it's never even there in the first place.

Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.

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.

Good days, they come around the oddest corners.

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

Long ago, long ago. The 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.

She's always thought that one of the beauties of New York is that you can be from anywhere and within moments of landing its yours.

I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.