Colm Toibin
Colm Toibin
Colm Tóibínis an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic and poet...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 May 1955
CountryIreland
strong imagination visuals
I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.
real school home
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.
pain regret attachment
..Some of our loves and attachments are elemental and beyond our choosing, and for that very reason they come spiced with pain and regret and need and hollowness and a feeling as close to anger as I will ever be able to imagine.
writing firsts fountain
I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.
strong writing suffering
Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.
men views numbers
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.
becoming ordinary way
Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can.
should-have personality should
I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point.
lying intelligent self
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.
writing manipulation realizing
All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.
running country military
Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.
america becomes distance emotional entire few frightened home newness seem space spends thinks time
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.
age certain city dublin good happens quiet settle
Solitude is good in the evening. Dublin is a quiet city when you get to a certain age, when your friends settle down and have kids. Nothing much happens here.
came love people run talking writers
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.