Novel Quotes by Colm Toibin

8 Novel quotes by Colm Toibin

Colm Toibin’s eight brief statements about the novel reveal his lyrical, often introspective style. Though limited in number, they provide a clear sense of his reverence for narrative depth and human nuance.

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Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I…

Colm Toibin

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My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name…

Colm Toibin

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I work very deliberately, with a plan. But sometimes I come to a point that I planned as the end and it…

Colm Toibin

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“A novelist's job is almost to be a stupid as possible, except in the cunning moment when you need to structure something,…

Colm Tóibín

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“Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abruptly." [ Colm Tóibín, Novelist –…

Colm Tóibín

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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

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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

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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

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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

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“What is hard to understand is that our dreams matter”

Colm Tóibín

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.

Colm Toibin

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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

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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

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“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

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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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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