I first went to Barcelona in 1975 after university, and I stayed for three years. I learnt Catalan because that's what everyone… — Colm Toibin Barcelona Copy Share Image
Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as… — Colm Toibin Pleasure Copy Share Image
Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I… — Colm Toibin Books 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
The only routine I have is that I finish everything I start. I wake up early every day - about 6.30 A.M.… — Colm Toibin About 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 Attempting Copy Share Image
John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things. — Colm Toibin About 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 Able Copy Share Image
Solitude is good in the evening. Dublin is a quiet city when you get to a certain age, when your friends settle… — Colm Toibin Age 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 did think of becoming a priest quite late on, when other boys were thinking of knocking over fences and going out… — Colm Toibin Becoming Copy Share Image
“Here in this cemetery, which they began to stroll around once more, the state of not-knowing and not-feeling which belonged to the… — Colm Tóibín Happiness 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
“There will always be reservations, things one must leave out, events one can’t explain without handing over a full map of one’s… — Colm Tóibín Life Copy Share Image
When a book comes from the publisher and you see it for the first time... Of course it's not remotely like seeing… — Colm Toibin Baby Copy Share Image
“In the meantime, when I wake in the night, I want more. I want what happened not to have happened, to have… — Colm Tóibín 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 Affect Copy Share Image
Everyone who's in America spends the first few years not experiencing it. The person is frightened by the newness of the place… — Colm Toibin America 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 About Copy Share Image
“He stopped going to his own bed, waiting instead until Leander was ready for bed and then going to the room with… — Colm Tóibín Night 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
All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much. — Colm Toibin Actually Copy Share Image
“Henry wondered, too, what life would have had for her and how her exquisite faculty of challenge could have dealt with a… — Colm Tóibín Life Copy Share Image
“I have to give up everything, the house, the servants, my friends, my whole life. I will freeze to death or I… — Colm Tóibín Death Copy Share Image
