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 Copy Share Image
I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point. — Colm Toibin Idea Copy Share Image
I don't think we have a right to enjoy our neuroses; in fact, I believe that we have a duty not to.… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
“Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abruptly." [ Colm Tóibín, Novelist –… — Colm Tóibín Art Copy Share Image
“The details of what I told him were with me all the years in the same way as my hands or my… — Colm Tóibín Copy Share Image
I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what… — Colm Toibin Fiction Copy Share Image
“If water can be changed into wine and the dead can be brought back, then I want time pushed back.” — Colm Tóibín Time Copy Share Image
“I don’t go in for change. It is not one of my subjects. I have always taken the view that noticing change… — Colm Tóibín Change Copy Share Image
I still have a stammer that I can control by not opening a sentence with a hard consonant, or by concentrating for… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
The problem is once you've written the opening paragraph and worked out how the rest of the story will go in your… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
I think that was one of the things that happened, especially in Ireland, that you left in order to improve yourself, and… — 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 work very deliberately, with a plan. But sometimes I come to a point that I planned as the end and it… — Colm Toibin Children Copy Share Image
“Q: What's the biggest myth about writing? A: That there's any wildness attached to it. Writing tends to be very deliberate." [… — Colm Tóibín Creative process Copy Share Image
Look at Austen. In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then a period of… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
“On one of the nights during my journey I wandered out under the sky which was lit with stars and I believed… — Colm Tóibín Change Copy Share Image
“There’s an immense dramatic possibility in describing that universe. The books, for me, were an enormous relief in that sense of how… — Colm Tóibín Beauty Copy Share Image
I like it that they [disciples] feed me and pay for my clothes and protect me. And in return I will do… — Colm Toibin Anecdotes Copy Share Image
“...in one of his Irish Times columns written under the name of Myles na gCopaleen, [Flann] O’Brien offered a service to readers… — Colm Tóibin Books Copy Share Image
Anyone who works in the arts knows, if you're writing a novel or a play or anything, you have to be ready… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral… — Colm Toibin Aria Copy Share Image
In my 20s, as I began to travel in Europe, I found comfort in religious paintings. Even though my own belief in… — Colm Toibin Art Copy Share Image
It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country… — Colm Toibin Ambiguity Copy Share Image
I write with a sort of grim determination to deal with things that are hidden and difficult, and this means, I think,… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
“Andersen was perhaps too young to know how memory and regret can mingle, how much sorrow can be held within, and how… — Colm Tóibín Memory Copy Share Image
..Some of our loves and attachments are elemental and beyond our choosing, and for that very reason they come spiced with pain… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
“I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what… — Colm Tóibín Fiction 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 Books 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
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
History is a way of interpreting, rather than, say, knowing, the past. It is usually a set of disputes between those who… — Colm Toibin Access Copy Share Image
I'm slightly influenced by sport in that I like the idea of trying, like an athlete, to keep absolutely ready. That's an… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
“As his widow, she knew who she was and what she had inherited. She had loved him in her way and sometimes… — Colm Toibin Heart Copy Share Image
The next time I write a play - in order to get audience trust for a particular sort of tragic line, I'll… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
“We had used up all of our time. And I wondered if that made any difference to my mother then, as she… — Colm Tóibín Life Copy Share Image
Some of our loves and attachments are elemental and beyond our choosing, and for that very reason they come spiced with pain… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
The Roman Catholic Church and its rituals were so much part of life that, although my parents would often question a small… — Colm Toibin Art of life Copy Share Image
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
“Trollope and Balzac, Zola and Dickens would, he felt, have become bitter old preachers, or mad hairy schoolmasters had they been born… — Colm Tóibín Trollope Copy Share Image
![“Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abruptly." [ Colm Tóibín, Novelist – Portrait of the Artist , The Guardian, 19 February 2013]” quote by Colm Tóibín](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/f03/colm-toibin-3377_art_ending-a-novel-is-almost-like-putting-a_2409916.png)
![“I like it that they [disciples] feed me and pay for my clothes and protect me. And in return I will do for them what I can, but no more than that. Just as I cannot breathe the breath of another or help the heart of someone else to beat or their bones not to weaken or their flesh not to shrivel, I…” quote by Colm Toibin](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/c85/colm-toibin-3377_anecdotes_i-like-it-that-they-disciples-feed-me-an_3082960.png)
![“...in one of his Irish Times columns written under the name of Myles na gCopaleen, [Flann] O’Brien offered a service to readers who owned books but did not open them. For a fee, books would be handled, with passages underlined or spines damaged or words such as ‘Rubbish’ or ‘Yes, but cf Homer, Od…” quote by Colm Tóibin](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/586/colm-toibin-3377_books_in-one-of-his-irish-times-columns-writte_684539.png)
