Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I don't think we have a right to enjoy our neuroses; in fact, I believe that we have a duty not to. But we cannot walk away from ourselves. Who else is there to become? "
Colm Toibin
I Believe
Think
Walk
Related Quotes:
" When a book comes from the publisher and you see it for the first time... Of course it's not remotely like seeing a baby for the first time, but I can remember with each book what room I was in when I opened it. That would be excitement, though, I think. Not pride. "
Colm Toibin
Remember
Time
Think
" I said that when I looked at photographs of the firefighters who went into the Twin Towers, their faces looked to me like Irish faces. I hadn't yet learnt how careful outsiders have to be when talking about race in America, and I'd put my foot in it. Someone stood up and said aggressively, 'What do you mean by Irish faces?' "
Colm Toibin
You
America
Race
" The best thing about New York is working late into the night. At 1 in the morning on a Saturday, to be still working, there's an immense satisfaction in being enclosed by it. "
Colm Toibin
Best
New York
Night
" It is important to find a publisher and equally important not to be noticed until your third or fourth book. "
Colm Toibin
Book
Your
Important
" I did think of becoming a priest quite late on, when other boys were thinking of knocking over fences and going out with girls. I would have made a very good bishop: nice housekeeper, nice clothes - god, the clothes. "
Colm Toibin
God
Good
Out
" I think that was one of the things that happened, especially in Ireland, that you left in order to improve yourself, and you couldn't write home and tell people, 'Look, I'm really lonely,' because you'd realize how much those letters were going to matter, that you needed to put good news or uplifting news into them. "
Colm Toibin
Good
Home
Yourself
" The problem is once you've written the opening paragraph and worked out how the rest of the story will go in your head, there's nothing in it for you. I write in longhand using disposable fountain pens on the right-hand side of the notebook for the first draft, then I rewrite some of the sentences and paragraphs on the left-hand side. "
Colm Toibin
Go
Fountain
Problem
" Solitude is good in the evening. Dublin is a quiet city when you get to a certain age, when your friends settle down and have kids. Nothing much happens here. "
Colm Toibin
Age
You
Solitude
" I went to live in Barcelona in 1975, when I was twenty. Even before I went there, I knew more about the Spanish Civil War than I did about the Irish Civil War. I liked Barcelona, and then I grew to like a place in the Catalan Pyrenees called the Pillars, especially an area between the village of Flavors and the high mountains around it. "
Colm Toibin
Live
Village
War
" While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone. "
Colm Toibin
Work
Time
Know
" Look at Austen. In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then a period of solitude. No flashbacks and no backstory. Let's have no more back story! "
Colm Toibin
Story
Back
Dance
" I've never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it's not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory is very much the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more. "
Colm Toibin
Ireland
Because
More
" John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things. "
Colm Toibin
Same
Me
OK
" I first went to Barcelona in 1975 after university, and I stayed for three years. I learnt Catalan because that's what everyone speaks in the mountains. They speak English to foreigners, but what people say to each other is much more important than what they say to you. "
Colm Toibin
Speak
You
Important
" I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write. "
Colm Toibin
Write
Because
Day
" Writer's block! It doesn't exist. You just long for ideas to go away so you have an idea of peace. "
Colm Toibin
Ideas
Go
Peace
" Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up in a house of women. "
Colm Toibin
Women
View
Three
" People's interest in glamour and clothes and nylon stockings and all those things were, when I was a little boy, the sort of world that I listened to. "
Colm Toibin
World
Glamour
Boy
" Everyone who's in America spends the first few years not experiencing it. The person is frightened by the newness of the place and doesn't see things. Her emotional universe becomes the entire universe. And then when she thinks of home, her distance in space can seem like a distance in time. "
Colm Toibin
She
America
Home
" I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen. "
Colm Toibin
Happens
Happen
Ideal
" In my 20s, as I began to travel in Europe, I found comfort in religious paintings. Even though my own belief in Catholic dogma had been shaken and weakened, I found that the beauty and the richness of the art still held me. "
Colm Toibin
Comfort
Belief
Beauty
" The Roman Catholic Church and its rituals were so much part of life that, although my parents would often question a small matter of dogma and none of us seemed more religious than anyone else, no one ever questioned the rituals or the basic tenets of belief. "
Colm Toibin
Small
Life
Us
" In Ireland, novels and plays still have a strange force. The writing of fiction and the creation of theatrical images can affect life there more powerfully and stealthily than speeches, or even legislation. Imagined worlds can lodge deeply in the private sphere, dislodging much else, especially when the public sphere is fragile. "
Colm Toibin
Life
Creation
Strange
" My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name is Irish and would not be familiar to English editors, one of them said: 'If she writes anything else, do let us know.' Slowly, very slowly, the books began to sell and be noticed. "
Colm Toibin
Down
Name
Said
" I work very deliberately, with a plan. But sometimes I come to a point that I planned as the end and it needs softening. Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep - it can't be done abruptly. "
Colm Toibin
Child
Work
Sleep
" Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country. "
Colm Toibin
Run
Country
Military
" The novel space is a pure space. I'm nobody once I go into that room. I'm not gay, I'm not bald, I'm not Irish. I'm not anybody. I'm nobody. I'm the guy telling the story, and the only person that matters is the person reading that story, the target. It's to get that person to feel what I'm trying to dramatize. "
Colm Toibin
Story
Feel
Trying
" I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point. "
Colm Toibin
Point
Never
Personality
" 'One Minus One' and 'Barcelona, 1975' are more or less autobiographical. "
Colm Toibin
Autobiographical
Less
Barcelona
" History is a way of interpreting, rather than, say, knowing, the past. It is usually a set of disputes between those who have access to the same sources. It depends on ideology as much as voting in an election does. "
Colm Toibin
History
Voting
Say