All Colm Toibin Quotes
- I was first in Sydney in 1993, and have been a few times since then. For someone who didn't know Australia, it came as a… Australia
- I went to live in Barcelona in 1975, when I was twenty. Even before I went there, I knew more about the Spanish Civil War… Area
- 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… From
- 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… All
- 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… Disposable
- 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… Anyone
- 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… Baby
- 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… Always Lies
- You create a world away from home and make new rooms for yourself. But when you arrive back home in your old rooms, the world… Anyone
- in skies of deepening blue the moon, heaven's queen was now afloat Afloat
- ..Some of our loves and attachments are elemental and beyond our choosing, and for that very reason they come spiced with pain and regret and… Able
- As I settled down to sleep in that new bed in the dark city, I saw that it was too late now, too late for… Bed
- She was lonely without Blunt, but she was lonelier at the idea that the world went on as though she had not loved him. Blunt
- 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… All
- 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… Bypassing
- 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… Book
- In my 20s, as I began to travel in Europe, I found comfort in religious paintings. Even though my own belief in Catholic dogma had… Art
- 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… Books
- 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… Affect
- Solitude is good in the evening. Dublin is a quiet city when you get to a certain age, when your friends settle down and have… Age
- 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… Bearings
- Describe character using dialogue. Describe character using what the characters see or do or think, but not what they had done or where they had… Been
- When I was 19, I thought I wanted to be an English civil servant. It was the most exotic thing at the time - can… Ad
- 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… Access