Colm Toibin Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen.”

“I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write.”

“Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can.”

“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.”

“It is important to find a publisher and equally important not to be noticed until your third or fourth book.”

“People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away.”

“People's interest in glamour and clothes and nylon stockings and all those things were, when I was a little boy, the sort of world that I listened to.”

“While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone.”

“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.”

“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.”