If you have to read to cheer yourself up, read biographies of writers who went insane. — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
“It had been easier to present a self in full possession of pride and confidence.” — Colm Tóibín Confidence Copy Share Image
Writer's block! It doesn't exist. You just long for ideas to go away so you have an idea of peace. — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
“It was like the arrival of night when you knew that you would never see anything in daylight again.” — Colm Tóibín Daylight Copy Share Image
Between the ages of 8 and 12 it was difficult to know what my father was saying, and he moved very slowly,… — Colm Toibin Age Copy Share Image
“In the morning, she was not sure that she had slept as much as lived a set of vivid dreams, letting them… — Colm Tóibín Dreams 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
All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much. — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
I feel just fine about ignoring or bypassing the rights of people I have known and loved to be rendered faithfully, or… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
I think the whole business of people emigrating was that no one ever told them, although everyone knew, especially if it was… — 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 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
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
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
“...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
“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 Empty mind Copy Share Image
“I saw him trying to struggle and call out. But because of the robe, he could not move and his voice could… — Colm Tóibín Agamemnon Copy Share Image
“But he also knew that, as much as he wanted to aid and console the soldier, he wanted to be alone in… — Colm Tóibín Alone 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 was a time, I know, when I felt rage and I felt sorrow. But now I have lost what leads up… — Colm Tóibín Grief 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 Copy Share Image
“You know that you are the only person who shakes his head in exasperation when I insist on making jokes and small… — Colm Toibin 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
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
She was lonely without Blunt, but she was lonelier at the idea that the world went on as though she had not… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was… — Colm Toibin Age Copy Share Image
“I remember too much; I am like the air on a calm day as it holds itself still, letting nothing escape.” — Colm Tóibín Calm 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
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 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
“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
![“...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/quotes/i/586/colm-toibin-3377_books_in-one-of-his-irish-times-columns-writte_684539.png)
