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" Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can. "
Colm Toibin
Way
Funny
Life
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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
" When I was 19, I thought I wanted to be an English civil servant. It was the most exotic thing at the time - can you imagine, in the middle of the IRA bombing campaigns? I saw an ad inviting Irish applicants for an induction course, so I signed up. "
Colm Toibin
Up
Imagine
Irish
" 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 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
" Between the ages of 8 and 12 it was difficult to know what my father was saying, and he moved very slowly, and then he died. "
Colm Toibin
Know
Saying
Slowly
" The old Victorian laws against homosexuality were still on the statute books until the early 1990s. As a gay man living in Ireland, I and people like me found it easy to feel less than citizens. "
Colm Toibin
People
Early
Man
" 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
" Describe character using dialogue. Describe character using what the characters see or do or think, but not what they had done or where they had been. "
Colm Toibin
Character
See
Think
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second. "
Colm Toibin
Write
Pen
Fountain
" I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner. "
Colm Toibin
Impossible
I Am
Listen
" 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
" I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination. "
Colm Toibin
Words
Live
Imagination
" 'One Minus One' and 'Barcelona, 1975' are more or less autobiographical. "
Colm Toibin
Autobiographical
Less
Barcelona
" I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point. "
Colm Toibin
Point
Never
Personality
" 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
" People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away. "
Colm Toibin
Me
Silence
Writing
" 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
" You create a world away from home and make new rooms for yourself. But when you arrive back home in your old rooms, the world you've made for yourself ceases to be real. Everything seems to crumble. Anyone who's been sent away to boarding school can understand that. "
Colm Toibin
School
Home
You
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
" 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
" 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