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New York is the city of exiles — everyone comes from somewhere else. Ireland has been for years a country of exiles — everyone wanting to be somewhere else. I adore New York for its anonymity too — something difficult to find at home. See, I still call Ireland "home" even though I've been gone for fifteen years or more. But I'm at home here, too, I mean in New York. This is my city
Colum McCann
I tend to write in cinemagraphic strokes. In other words I create pictures. From these pictures people emerge. The landscape gives birth to the people and gradually the people take over
Colum McCann
Our inability to recognize the extent to which racism exists is truly amazing.
Colum McCann
Zoli was always going to be a different cultural proposition. I didn't know enough about Papusza and I certainly didn't want any of the straitjackets of traditional non-fiction. So I wanted to take just the templates of Papusza's life and turn them around, set them free. I certainly didn't want Zoli to die alone and forgotten. I didn't want her to become a spectacle of disintegration.
I wanted the story to be true and honest and accurate, but I also wanted to say that there is a future, there is a civil rights movement at the core here, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it's not just a train bearing down awful fast
Colum McCann
I suppose the Irish writer has always had a peculiar home in the world. By a combination of strategies — going into exile, subverting the language, twisting the fictional form — he or she has consistently remained provocative
Colum McCann
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