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" I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point. "
Colm Toibin
Point
Never
Personality
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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 have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second. "
Colm Toibin
Write
Pen
Fountain
" 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
" I write with a sort of grim determination to deal with things that are hidden and difficult, and this means, I think, that pleasure is out of the question. I would associate this with narcissism anyway, and I would disapprove of it. "
Colm Toibin
Determination
Narcissism
Think
" I still have a stammer that I can control by not opening a sentence with a hard consonant, or by concentrating for a moment, breathing softly down. Growing up, the 'Our Father' was lovely, made for me, the 'Hail Mary' was gorgeous, and 'Glory Be to the Father' was an absolute nightmare. "
Colm Toibin
Control
Moment
Father
" I lived in the Republic of Ireland. I wrote a book about the North but as an outsider. The hatreds there were not mine. I never felt them. I liked how open in most ways Catalan nationalism was, compared to Irish nationalism. I disliked the violence and cruelty in Ireland. "
Colm Toibin
Violence
Book
Cruelty
" 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
" 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
" 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 feel just fine about ignoring or bypassing the rights of people I have known and loved to be rendered faithfully, or to be left in peace, and out of novels. "
Colm Toibin
Left
Peace
People
" You have to keep writing. It's almost like practice, almost like tennis, that actually after a few days of not writing, first of all it makes you slightly depressed and uneasy, but it also affects the style when you start up again. You need to get the show on the road. "
Colm Toibin
Style
Writing
Road
" 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
" 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
" It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of the need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present. "
Colm Toibin
Thinking
History
Past
" I think you can get a sort of intensity and an edginess offering nine stories in a book. Competing versions of things. "
Colm Toibin
Book
Stories
Think
" It really matters to writers to find and treasure readers, all the more when they're on the other side of the world. "
Colm Toibin
Matters
More
Treasure
" Anyone who works in the arts knows, if you're writing a novel or a play or anything, you have to be ready for someone to say, 'Your time is up.' "
Colm Toibin
Say
You
Someone
" 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
" 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
" 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
" The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and painting, as much as from the need to impart mere information, or mirror anything. I am not a realist writer, even if I seem like one. "
Colm Toibin
I Am
Poetry
Mirror
" Between the time I was 16 until I was about 20, the books I read were by people like Thomas Mann, James Baldwin, Thom Gunn, Elizabeth Bishop. All gay, of course, although I swear I didn't know that at the time. Yet all of them, it turned out, had had a parent who died during their childhood. Sexuality is nothing compared to that. "
Colm Toibin
Time
People
Parent
" 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
" 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
" The only routine I have is that I finish everything I start. I wake up early every day - about 6.30 A.M. - but I do not work every day. I could laze for a day or two, but I wouldn't do it for three. "
Colm Toibin
Work
Wake Up
Three
" I was first in Sydney in 1993, and have been a few times since then. For someone who didn't know Australia, it came as a shock how intelligent, interesting and funny the people were. If I lived there I might see it differently, but as a visitor it was a lot of fun. "
Colm Toibin
Funny
People
Know
" 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
" 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
" 'One Minus One' and 'Barcelona, 1975' are more or less autobiographical. "
Colm Toibin
Autobiographical
Less
Barcelona