In Ireland, novels and plays still have a strange force. The writing of fiction and the creation of theatrical images can affect… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
I lived in the Republic of Ireland. I wrote a book about the North but as an outsider. The hatreds there were… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
I said that when I looked at photographs of the firefighters who went into the Twin Towers, their faces looked to me… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
I went to live in Barcelona in 1975, when I was twenty. Even before I went there, I knew more about the… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
When I was 19, I thought I wanted to be an English civil servant. It was the most exotic thing at the… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
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… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
I've never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it's not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
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… — Colm Toibin Copy Share
Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's… — Colm Toibin Copy Share
Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought… — Colm Toibin Copy Share
It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of… — Colm Toibin Copy Share
The only routine I have is that I finish everything I start. I wake up early every day - about 6.30 A.M. - but… — Colm Toibin Copy Share
While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies… — Colm Toibin Copy Share
John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things. — Colm Toibin Copy Share
Some of our loves and attachments are elemental and beyond our choosing, and for that very reason they come spiced with pain and regret… — Colm Toibin Copy Share
Solitude is good in the evening. Dublin is a quiet city when you get to a certain age, when your friends settle down and… — Colm Toibin Copy Share
“The details of what I told him were with me all the years in the same way as my hands or my arms were… — Colm Tóibín Copy Share
I did think of becoming a priest quite late on, when other boys were thinking of knocking over fences and going out with girls.… — Colm Toibin Copy Share
“Here in this cemetery, which they began to stroll around once more, the state of not-knowing and not-feeling which belonged to the dead seemed… — Colm Tóibín Copy Share
“I don’t go in for change. It is not one of my subjects. I have always taken the view that noticing change is a… — Colm Tóibín Copy Share
“There will always be reservations, things one must leave out, events one can’t explain without handing over a full map of one’s life, unfolding… — Colm Tóibín Copy Share
