“Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abruptly." [ Colm Tóibín, Novelist –… — Colm Tóibín Art Copy Share Image
I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point. — Colm Toibin Idea Copy Share Image
“She wondered if she was alone in having nothing between the dullness of her own days and the sheer brilliance of this… — Colm Tóibín Copy Share Image
I think you can get a sort of intensity and an edginess offering nine stories in a book. Competing versions of things. — Colm Toibin Book Copy Share Image
“It was my companion, my strange friend who woke me in the night and again in the morning and who stayed close… — Colm Tóibín Companion 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
The best thing about New York is working late into the night. At 1 in the morning on a Saturday, to be… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
“The rest of the time he entertained all the guilt that wished to call, carried in by the wind through the darkness,… — Colm Tóibín Darkness Copy Share Image
“memory and regret can mingle, how much sorrow can be held within, and how nothing seems to have any shape or meaning… — Colm Tóibín Memory Copy Share Image
“Could we move around the world staying in nice hotels, just we three, and writing letters home when some very witty remark… — Colm Tóibín Around the world Copy Share Image
The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and painting, as much as… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
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
“I have been acquainted with the smell of death. The sickly, sugary smell that wafted in the wind towards the rooms in… — Colm Tóibín Death 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
I said that when I looked at photographs of the firefighters who went into the Twin Towers, their faces looked to me… — Colm Toibin America Copy Share Image
The old Victorian laws against homosexuality were still on the statute books until the early 1990s. As a gay man living in… — Colm Toibin Books Copy Share Image
“We live in a strange time,’ Electra said. ‘A time when the gods are fading. Some of us still see them but… — Colm Tóibín Copy Share Image
I do not know why it matters that I should tell the truth to myself at night, why it should matter that… — Colm Toibin Bird Copy Share Image
“You have asked two questions, and I will answer them separately,” Gray said. “Trollope writes with precision and feeling about love and… — Colm Tóibín Love Copy Share Image
“His consolation was that at least he had known her as the world had not, and the pain of living without her… — Colm Tóibín Consolation Copy Share Image
“Even when she woke in the night and thought about it, she did not allow herself to conclude that she did not… — Colm Tóibín Heart 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
I went to live in Barcelona in 1975, when I was twenty. Even before I went there, I knew more about the… — Colm Toibin Barcelona Copy Share Image
When I was 19, I thought I wanted to be an English civil servant. It was the most exotic thing at the… — Colm Toibin 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
“...she still stopped when her mind moved towards real fear or dread or, worse, towards the thought that she was going to… — Colm Tóibín Fear Copy Share Image
You create a world away from home and make new rooms for yourself. But when you arrive back home in your old… — Colm Toibin Copy Share Image
“For the first time in years, he felt the deep sadness of exile, knowing that he was alone here, an outsider, and… — Colm Tóibín Deep sadness Copy Share Image
I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic… — Colm Toibin 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 Copy Share Image
The Roman Catholic Church and its rituals were so much part of life that, although my parents would often question a small… — Colm Toibin Art of life Copy Share Image
“Trollope and Balzac, Zola and Dickens would, he felt, have become bitter old preachers, or mad hairy schoolmasters had they been born… — Colm Tóibín Trollope 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 Copy Share Image
As I settled down to sleep in that new bed in the dark city, I saw that it was too late now,… — Colm Toibin 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 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 Cemetery Copy Share Image
Between the time I was 16 until I was about 20, the books I read were by people like Thomas Mann, James… — Colm Toibin 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 Copy Share Image
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 Books 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
![“Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abruptly." [ Colm Tóibín, Novelist – Portrait of the Artist , The Guardian, 19 February 2013]” quote by Colm Tóibín](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f03/colm-toibin-3377_art_ending-a-novel-is-almost-like-putting-a_2409916.png)
