Colm Toibin Quotes

49 quotes in 953 categories

• I do not know why it matters that I should tell the truth to myself at night, why it should matter that the truth should…
• 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…
• All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.
• 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…
• 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…
• I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.
• I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.
• I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point.
• I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen.
• I think you can get a sort of intensity and an edginess offering nine stories in a book. Competing versions of things.
• 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…
• It is important to find a publisher and equally important not to be noticed until your third or fourth book.
• It really matters to writers to find and treasure readers, all the more when they're on the other side of the world.
• John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.
• Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can.
• 'One Minus One' and 'Barcelona, 1975' are more or less autobiographical.
• 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 a…
• Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up…
• Writer's block! It doesn't exist. You just long for ideas to go away so you have an idea of peace.
• Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.

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