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5b9e65d
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it struck me that maybe the young girl had just been a prostitute. I felt a momentary sigh of gratitude, and then the awareness stopped me cold, the walls pulsed in on me. How cheap was I?
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Colum McCann |
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62e0dd0
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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. No
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Colum McCann |
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065eb01
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He would not become soft. It was exhaustion he wanted--it helped him write. He needed each of his words to appreciate the weight they bore. He felt like he was lifting them and then letting them drop to the end of his finge
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Colum McCann |
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07085ff
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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.
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Colum McCann |
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9eac12a
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The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies.
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Colum McCann |
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924ab9d
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I had always hated Nixon, not just for obvious reasons, but it seemed to me that he had learned not only to destroy what was left behind, but also to poison what was to come.
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Colum McCann |
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61eedd4
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There's nothing so absurd that you can't find at least one person to buy it.
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Colum McCann |
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63e3c9d
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In the end you should probably know your characters as well as you know yourself. Not only what they had for breakfast this morning, but what they wanted to have for breakfast.
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Colum McCann |
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9576d93
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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.
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Colum McCann |
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90e2666
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My father had once told me the story of how, when he was in the work camp, a truckload of giant logs was brought in to be chopped. He was on ax duty with a gang of twelve. It was a dreadfully hot summer and each swing of the blade was torture. He hacked at a log and there was the unmistakable sound of metal hitting metal. He bent down and found a mushroom-shaped chunk of lead embedded in the trunk. A bullet. He counted the rings from the pe..
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Colum McCann |
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a01f8e7
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dshtn zbnchrb w nrm mytwnd bh hrgwnh Hmqty jl dhd.
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Colum McCann |
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8e70023
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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.
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Colum McCann |
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567e197
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I felt exasperated by her, always turning, always changing, always making me feel as if I was looking for oxygen--how much like fresh air and how much, at the same time, like drowning.
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Colum McCann |
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efa190b
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There are moments we return to. We are in theme. We rest there and there is nothing else.
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Colum McCann |
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3d4e281
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you soon find out how loud the silence really is. everything unsaid leads eventually to what is said.
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Colum McCann |
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e5f2341
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only when a man dies can his life acquire a beginning, middle, and an end: up until then we are constantly unfinished, even the midpoint cannot be located. So only the final word finds the middle word and this, in a way becomes a verse--one's death explains oneself.
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Colum McCann |
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d87579e
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So, leave the cynics be. Out-cynic them. Step into that elsewhere. Believe that your story is bigger than yourself. In
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Colum McCann |
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1c974df
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It's like moving through a delicious fog.
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Colum McCann |
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41a6d9e
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Their reflection in the glass. The water behind them stretched distant and black. I stood in the doorway a long, long time, unsure of what to do or say. I wasn't interested in their
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Colum McCann |
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f6c118e
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Sooner or later they all turn their backs. They all leave. That's gospel. I've been there. I've seen it. They all do.
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Colum McCann |
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9732fdb
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His face had softened: as if just being a moment with her had relaxed him, allowed him to be someone different. 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.
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Colum McCann |
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51d03d6
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Truth: When criticized you go berserk, but in your defense remember that it is those who calmly listen who never change.
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Colum McCann |
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b9fe80a
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He glanced up in my direction and I froze. Quickly I turned away. There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface. There is, I think, a fear of love. There is a fear of love.
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Colum McCann |
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0296bdb
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Pain's nothing. Pains what you give, not what you get.
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Colum McCann |
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ed28767
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There isn't a story in the world that isn't in part, at least, addressed to the past. I
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Colum McCann |
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d05c0ad
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Most of the customers were from Kerry and Limerick. One was a lawyer, a tall, fat sandy-haired man. He lorded it over the others by buying them drinks. They clinked glasses with him and called him a 'motherfucking ambulance chaser' when he went to the bathroom. It was not a series of words they would have used at home -- motherfucking ambulance chasers weren't big in the old country -- but they said it as often as they could. With great hil..
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Colum McCann |
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e764775
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They bobbed back and forth, little Halloween apples.
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Colum McCann |
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44ce35d
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Every man with his own peculiar vice. His will hardly rock heaven or hell.
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Colum McCann |
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fe2ed57
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How far from real the truth is. I wanted then to take every murdering bastard in Northern Ireland, and have them sleep for a night in my boy's blue rowboat, out on the lough, in the dark, among the reeds, turning in primal celtic patterns.
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Colum McCann |
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d4e13f7
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He would not become soft. It was exhaustion he wanted--it helped him write. He needed each of his words to appreciate the weight they bore. He felt like he was lifting them and then letting them drop to the end of his fingers
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Colum McCann |
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2e0cc11
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She expected no judgement and wanted no pity.
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pity
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Colum McCann |
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3c1012a
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When a great truth gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it.
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Colum McCann |
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beb6ac3
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They will have to live with it for the rest of the trip now, but Alcock knows how the engine roar can make a pilot fall asleep, that the rhythm can lull a man into nodding off before he hits the waves. It is fierce work--he can feel the machine in his muscles. The sheer tug through his body. The exhaustion of the mind. Always avoiding cloud. Always looking for a line of sight. Creating any horizon possible. The brain inventing phantom turns..
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Colum McCann |
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d10aa8d
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We have always absorbed our own disintegration.
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Colum McCann |
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53a06d3
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In their familiarity, they had developed a dislike for each other.
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Colum McCann |
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b40557e
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He wanted to hear his own footsteps to prove that he trod the ground.
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Colum McCann |
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719f019
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The wind surged in a roar, then died down like it was pondering some heavy shit, then started back up like before.
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Colum McCann |
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ef68e4b
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He took a trip ... up to ... Elliott's house, his mansion rather. Awful place, twelve bedrooms and swimming pool and media hall and five car garage, but cheap and shoddy all the same, like the one next door and next door to that. A row of Ikea houses, such wealthy mediocrity. His very own son. His big, bald son. Who could believe it. The bigness, the baldness, the stupidity. In a house designed to bore the daylight out of visitors, no chara..
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Colum McCann |
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250b0c7
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ah, khwd dhhn ykh chh bsyr `myq st, mr pyyn bbr w bgdhr ab r lms khnm.
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Colum McCann |
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da2d5e6
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frznd hmyshh khwdkh nmymnd m mdr hmyshh mdr st.
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Colum McCann |
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91595f9
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When a great truth gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. She could see an orchestra in him, a whole range of instruments and sound. His voice was loud and booming. It is bound to go on until it becomes the thought of the world.
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Colum McCann |
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100d603
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She wanted to tell him so much, on the tarmac, the day he left. 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.
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life
colum-mccann
let-the-great-world-spin
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Colum McCann |
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b85e040
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That's what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they are the past.
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Colum McCann |
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5633ef5
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At the end of the letter he said, Fuck you, you heartless bitch, you rolled up my heart and squeezed it dry. Still, when I recalled him I would always see him waiting for me under the silver high school bleachers with a smile on his face and thirty-two perfect shining white teeth.
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Colum McCann |