Quotes by Colm Toibin - Page 2 | QuoteForever

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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 you've made for yourself ceases to be real. Everything seems to crumble. Anyone who's been sent away to boarding school can understand that.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Home
Real
Rooms
School
Seems
Arrive
Be Real
Boarding
Boarding School
Ceases
Crumble
Sent
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You have to keep writing. It's almost like practice, almost like tennis, that actually after a few days of not writing, first of all it makes you slightly depressed and uneasy, but it also affects the style when you start up again. You need to get the show on the road.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Tennis
Uneasy
Affects
Depressed
First Of All
Slightly
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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 / Novelist
Barcelona
Foreigners
People
Speak English
Years
Mountains
Learnt
People Say
Speaks
Stayed
They Say
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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 never felt them. I liked how open in most ways Catalan nationalism was, compared to Irish nationalism. I disliked the violence and cruelty in Ireland.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Cruelty
Ireland
Nationalism
Republic
Compared
Disliked
North
Outsider
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I think the whole business of people emigrating was that no one ever told them, although everyone knew, especially if it was to the United States, that it was forever, and the party before you left was called an 'American wake,' in the sense that they knew you wouldn't come back.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Wake
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I still have a stammer that I can control by not opening a sentence with a hard consonant, or by concentrating for a moment, breathing softly down. Growing up, the 'Our Father' was lovely, made for me, the 'Hail Mary' was gorgeous, and 'Glory Be to the Father' was an absolute nightmare.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Concentrating
Glory
Gorgeous
Growing Up
Hail
Lovely
Mary
Nightmare
Opening
Our Father
Absolute
Moment
Sentence
Softly
Stammer
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Everyone who's in America spends the first few years not experiencing it. The person is frightened by the newness of the place and doesn't see things. Her emotional universe becomes the entire universe. And then when she thinks of home, her distance in space can seem like a distance in time.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Distance
Frightened
Newness
Time Space Home
Space Time Home
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My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name is Irish and would not be familiar to English editors, one of them said: 'If she writes anything else, do let us know.' Slowly, very slowly, the books began to sell and be noticed.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Editors
Familiar
Publishers
Anything Else
Half Years
Slowly
Irish
Let Us
Noticed
Twenty
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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 / Novelist
Morning
Chamber
Impossible
Opera
Schubert
Song
Wagner
Writing
Bach
Beethoven
Mornings
Mostly
Mozart
Recent
Recent Years
Symphonies
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The next time I write a play - in order to get audience trust for a particular sort of tragic line, I'll try to bring the audience a good distance before that. Part of that is allowing comic moments to occur. I had been afraid of that - that once the audience started laughing in the play, they would never stop.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Allowing
Comic
Distance
Next Time
Tragic
Time Trust Good
Trust Time Good
Never Stop
Occur
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The novel space is a pure space. I'm nobody once I go into that room. I'm not gay, I'm not bald, I'm not Irish. I'm not anybody. I'm nobody. I'm the guy telling the story, and the only person that matters is the person reading that story, the target. It's to get that person to feel what I'm trying to dramatize.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Pure
Target
Bald
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I think that was one of the things that happened, especially in Ireland, that you left in order to improve yourself, and you couldn't write home and tell people, 'Look, I'm really lonely,' because you'd realize how much those letters were going to matter, that you needed to put good news or uplifting news into them.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Uplifting
Good News
Ireland
Letters
Lonely
Good Home Look
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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 / Novelist
Faces
Feet
Mean
Outsiders
Talking
Towers
Photographs
Twin
Firefighters
Foot
Learnt
Stood
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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 powerfully and stealthily than speeches, or even legislation. Imagined worlds can lodge deeply in the private sphere, dislodging much else, especially when the public sphere is fragile.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Creation
Fragile
Ireland
Legislation
Theatrical
Affect
Deeply
Images
Lodge
Novels
Speeches
Worlds
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Between the time I was 16 until I was about 20, the books I read were by people like Thomas Mann, James Baldwin, Thom Gunn, Elizabeth Bishop. All gay, of course, although I swear I didn't know that at the time. Yet all of them, it turned out, had had a parent who died during their childhood. Sexuality is nothing compared to that.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Childhood
Died
Parent
Sexuality
Swear
Although
Bishop
Elizabeth
James
Thom
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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 in it for you. I write in longhand using disposable fountain pens on the right-hand side of the notebook for the first draft, then I rewrite some of the sentences and paragraphs on the left-hand side.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Notebook
Disposable
Fountain
Hands
Opening
Paragraph
Pens
Sentences
Stories
Writing
Written
Your Will Rest
Draft
Rest
Longhand
Paragraphs
Rewrite
Using
Worked
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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 / Novelist
War
Barcelona
Civil War
Mountain
Pillars
Village
Civil
Flavors
Spanish
Twenty
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I do not know why it matters that I should tell the truth to myself at night, why it should matter that the truth should be spoken at least once in the world. Because the world is a place of silence, the sky at night when the birds have gone is a vast silent place. Words will make the slightest difference to the sky at night. They will not brighten it or make it less strange. And the day too has its own deep indifference to anything that is said.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Differences
Night
Sky
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Roth Unbound is filled with intelligent readings and smart judgments. Because of the author's sympathy and sharp mind, it offers real insight into the creative process itself, and into Philip Roth's high calling as a great American artist. The book is, in some ways, a radical rereading of Roth's life and his work. It is impossible, by the end, not to feel a tender admiration for Roth as a novelist and indeed for Claudia Roth Pierpont as an empathetic and brilliant critic.
Colm Toibin / Novelist
Book
Real
Smart
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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 / Novelist
Clothes
Heart
Simple
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