“ The only time I've ever learned anything from a review was when wrote a piece in the Guardian about my second novel, . He said that, together with the previous novel, it represented a diptych about t… Colm Toibin
“ For the first time in years, he felt the deep sadness of exile, knowing that he was alone here, an outsider, and too alert to the ironies, the niceties, the manners, and indeed, the morals to be able… Colm Toibin
“ Q: What's the biggest myth about writing?A: That there's any wildness attached to it. Writing tends to be very deliberate.[ Colm Toibin
“ He arranged the ceremony for two o'clock in the afternoon a week before she was to leave. The exam had gone well and she was almost certain that she would qualify. Because other couples to be married… Colm Toibin
“ 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 mat… Colm Toibin
“ It struck her that he might have told no one, not even his brothers, how he felt, and she thought how lonely that might have been for him. Colm Toibin
“ I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination. Colm Toibin
“ But he also knew that, as much as he wanted to aid and console the soldier, he wanted to be alone in his room with the night coming down and a book close by and pen and paper and the knowledge that th… Colm Toibin
“ I feel just fine about ignoring or bypassing the rights of people I have known and loved to be rendered faithfully, or to be left in peace, and out of novels. Colm Toibin
“ She would never have an ordinary day again in this ordinary place, that the rest of her life would be a struggle with the unfamiliar. Colm Toibin
“ There’s an immense dramatic possibility in describing that universe. The books, for me, were an enormous relief in that sense of how they were written to allow primary emotion, elemental emotion, to m… Colm Toibin
“ Well, I didn't really know what to say. So maybe I should say that I have thought about you and I like you, I like seeing you, I care for you and maybe I love you too. And the next time if you tell me… Colm Toibin
“ There will always be reservations, things one must leave out, events one can’t explain without handing over a full map of one’s life, unfolding it, making clear that all the lines and contours stand f… Colm Toibin
“ The details of what I told him were with me all the years in the same way as my hands or my arms were with me. Colm Toibin
“ [...] all my life when I have seen more than two men together I have seen foolishness and I have seen cruelty, but it is foolishness that I have noticed first. Colm Toibin
“ That which interest me above all else,' he wrote,'is the caligraphy of a tree or the tiles of a roof, and I mean leaf by leaf, branch by branch, blade by blade of the grass. Colm Toibin
“ She would try to put those two days behind her. No matter what she dreamed about, no matter how bad she felt, she had no choice, she knew, but to put it all swiftly out of her mind. She would have to… Colm Toibin
