Colm Toibin Quotes - Page 2

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• 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, Thinking, Offering

  "Exclusive Interview: Colm Toibin Talks About His New Story Collection". Interview with Anis Shivani, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 20, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

• Writer's block! It doesn't exist. You just long for ideas to go away so you have an idea of peace.

  Colm Toibin

  Block, Ideas, Long

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• I did think of becoming a priest quite late on, when other boys were thinking of knocking over fences and going out with girls. I would have made a very good bishop: nice housekeeper, nice clothes - god, the clothes.

  Colm Toibin

  Girl, Nice, Boys

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• I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic throwaway fountain pen. Then I work on a word processor using a different desk and a different room.

  Colm Toibin

  Notebook, Writing, Long

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• I said that when I looked at photographs of the firefighters who went into the Twin Towers, their faces looked to me like Irish faces. I hadn't yet learnt how careful outsiders have to be when talking about race in America, and I'd put my foot in it. Someone stood up and said aggressively, 'What do you mean by Irish faces?'

  Colm Toibin

  Mean, Talking, Feet

  7 Copy quote

• 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 people like me found it easy to feel less than citizens.

  Colm Toibin

  Book, Gay, Men

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• 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 out of the question. I would associate this with narcissism anyway and I would disapprove of it.

  Colm Toibin

  Determination, Writing, Mean

  "Writing is 'no fun', says Toíbín" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. March 2, 2009.

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• 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 I can, but no more than that. Just as I cannot breathe the breath of another or help the heart of someone else to beat or their bones not to weaken or their flesh not to shrivel, I cannot say more than I can say. And I know how deeply this disturbs them, and it would make me smile, this earnest need for foolish anecdote or sharp simple patterns in the story of what happened to us all, except that I have forgotten how to smile.

  Colm Toibin

  Heart, Simple, Clothes

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• 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 in a house of women.

  Colm Toibin

  Men, Numbers, Views

  "This Week in Fiction: Colm Tóibín" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. February 24, 2013.

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• 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 than I did about the Irish Civil War. I liked Barcelona, and then I grew to like a place in the Catalan Pyrenees called the Pillars, especially an area between the village of Flavors and the high mountains around it.

  Colm Toibin

  War, Mountain, Barcelona

  "This Week in Fiction: Colm Tóibín" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. February 24, 2013.

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• 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 shock how intelligent, interesting and funny the people were. If I lived there I might see it differently, but as a visitor it was a lot of fun.

  Colm Toibin

  Fun, Intelligent, Australia

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• 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 the first time, but I can remember with each book what room I was in when I opened it. That would be excitement, though, I think. Not pride.

  Colm Toibin

  Baby, Book, Pride

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• I first went to Barcelona in 1975 after university, and I stayed for three years. I learnt Catalan because that's what everyone speaks in the mountains. They speak English to foreigners, but what people say to each other is much more important than what they say to you.

  Colm Toibin

  Years, Speak English, People

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• “One Minus One’”and “Barcelona, 1975” are more or less autobiographical.

  Colm Toibin

  Barcelona, Minus

  "Exclusive Interview: Colm Toibin Talks About His New Story Collection". Interview with Anis Shivani, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 20, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

• I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner.

  Colm Toibin

  Song, Morning, Writing

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• 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 need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present.

  Colm Toibin

  Country, Reading, Thinking

  "History students will no longer tolerate or believe grand narratives" by Colm Toibin, www.theguardian.com. August 10, 2013.

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• 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 the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more.

  Colm Toibin

  Territory, Republic, Might

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• 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 everything. I would not be given a second chance. In the hours when I woke, I have to tell you that this struck me almost with relief.

  Colm Toibin

  Sleep, Dark, Second Chance

  Colm Toibin (2012). “The Empty Family: Stories”, p.84, Simon and Schuster

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• 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 and none of us seemed more religious than anyone else, no one ever questioned the rituals or the basic tenets of belief.

  Colm Toibin

  Religious, Parent, Catholic

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