Colum McCann Quotes

Our memory is and always will be as good as time travel gets, and in the meantime time will do the travelling for us.

I am interested in the past. Perhaps one of the reasons is we cannot make, cannot change the past. I mean you can hardly unmake the present. But the past after all is merely to say a memory, a dream. You know my own past seems continually changed when I am remembering it, or reading things that are interesting to me.

Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.

The trouble with travelling back later on is that you can never repeat the same experience.

It's like I'm stuck in a time bubble. Memories keep coming back, and of course, memories are a huge part of literature and cinema, from "Stand by Me" to "Blade Runner."

Some memories remain close; you can shut your eyes and find yourself back in them. But there are second-person memories, too, distant you memories, and these are trickier: you watch yourself in disbelief.

Then I turned to him commanding That he go the way he came, whence he came. But he answered me in sorrow, "May the Past not seek to borrow From the Present without blame - Just one memory from its store, Ere it goes to come no more, Back the pathway that it came, whence it came?"

We're captive on the carousel of time, we can't return we can only look behind.

There is nothing that makes a man more self-satisfied than a poor memory.

Shall memory restore The steps and the shore, The face and the meeting place.

The past is never where you think you left it.

In memory's telephoto lens, far objects are magnified.

Memories must enter the bloodstream, must churn awhile through the heart's mill, must be crushed and polished, be nearly forgotten or cling like burs to other stories before they spill forth in purple patterns, shapes of small bones and worm rot, shapes of clouds and the spaces between leaves.

In old age, you realise that while you're divided from your youth by decades, you can close your eyes and summon it at will. As a writer it puts one at a distinct advantage.

I have lots of favourite memories but I can't say that I have a favourite film.

I exist only in the past.

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

People can remember their childhood, but events from four or five years ago are in a never-never land.

I can barely remember what I was like 36 years ago when I was 21 years old.

You can never go back to a time and try to recreate that sound, because that time is done.

When I write about things, it's a lot to do with sense memory. How things smell and taste can bring incredible memories flooding back and transport you in an instant to another time and place.

Sometimes, to move into the future, you must go back the past.

Memories. That's the thing about photography. I look at the contact sheet, and it brings back everything: whether I was tired, whether I was full of beans.

I do enjoy thinking about the past.

Generally people forget the past and the path they took.