Let the Great World Spin

by Colum McCann

The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies.

Death, the greatest democracy of them all. The world’s oldest complaint. Happens to us all. Rich and poor. Fat and thin. Fathers and daughters. Mothers and sons.

The parties rolled on like rain.

The repeated lies become history, but they don’t necessarily become the truth.

I wondered how many assholes it took to make a police department.

When I was seventeen I had a body that Adam woulda dropped Eve for. Hot-potato time. It was prime, no lie. Nothing in the wrong place. I had legs a hundred miles long and a booty to die for. Adam woulda said to Eve, Eve, I’m leaving you, honey, and Jesus himself woulda been in the background saying, Adam, you’re one lucky motherfucker.

I could’ve eaten everything Corrie said, I coulda just gobbled it all down. He

Simple fact is she needed an ass-kicking.

There would always be an expletive in a New York sentence.

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.

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

There’s a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we’ve left it.

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