Colum McCann Quotes

I was lucky enough to be raised by a man of great integrity and rectitude. That said, he was also human and had his secret sins, as we all do.

People are human. There's such a premium today on being perfect. That's just not the way people are.

I think people are screw-ups, and even our greatest heroes are deeply flawed human beings. People make bad decisions for all the wrong reasons, and then somehow they'll do the right thing, and then somehow they'll save somebody, or they'll be compassionate. Horrible people can do wonderful things, and wonderful people can do horrible things.

It seems to me that most characters, in anything, are flawed in some way, just like most people. You look for the good in the flawed people and vice versa, and then try and make them appealing in some way.

I don't always like my own behavior. I haven't known anyone who is perfect all the time.

I think it's unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair; that's the human condition.

With my physicality and my face, I don't think I could pull off a completely righteous guy. There's something devious about my eyes. I like characters with flaws and to see how they overcome those flaws. I want to play real people, and they're flawed, not perfect.

I feel like life is much greater than a hero or a villain: there's good people that sometimes make mistakes.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

Nobody's perfect, and everybody plays the heel and the baby face at times in real life.

All of my characters are less than perfect.

I've yet to meet a person in my life who doesn't have some moral ambiguity.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

I think heroes who are not flawed are not believable.

It's very hard to play a man without any flaws.

I am a man of many flaws and contradictions.

All my characters are quite relatable, as they are flawed, true, and honest. All of us are flawed; nobody is pure and pious.

I personally feel that no human is a hero or a villain. All of us have our grey sides, and that is why grey interests me: because it's more human, more life-like.

People, you'll find, aren't usually all good or bad. Sometimes they're just a little bit good and a whole lot bad. And sometimes they're mostly good with a dash of bad. And most of us, well, we fall in the middle somewhere.

Maybe we are both good people who've done some bad things.

To be human is erroneous.

Nobody's perfect. We're all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels.

Look, we are human, we make mistakes. I will gladly shout from the rooftops that I am not perfect. Nor will I ever be.

The effort of building an ideal society always leads to violence, often to very extensive violence. Because, whether we like it or not, it is not possible to create an ideal society with imperfect people. And this, unfortunately, we are. So the main purpose for Nazism as well as for Communism was to create a 'new person'. In order to make room for it, the world needed to be rid of its non-perfect models.

Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.