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" 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
Related Quotes:
" All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much. "
Colm Toibin
Realize
You
Manipulation
" 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
" The next time I write a play - in order to get audience trust for a particular sort of tragic line, I'll try to bring the audience a good distance before that. Part of that is allowing comic moments to occur. I had been afraid of that - that once the audience started laughing in the play, they would never stop. "
Colm Toibin
Moments
Good
Distance
" I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second. "
Colm Toibin
Write
Pen
Fountain
" 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
" 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 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 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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'm slightly influenced by sport in that I like the idea of trying, like an athlete, to keep absolutely ready. That's an emotional thing, almost. I don't mean physically, although I play tennis. But you try to keep yourself ready. "
Colm Toibin
Athlete
Play
Trying
" John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things. "
Colm Toibin
Same
Me
OK
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
" Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can. "
Colm Toibin
Way
Funny
Life
" 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