Author

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.

From Colm Toibin

I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.

From Colm Toibin

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.

From Colm Toibin

I don't think we have a right to enjoy our neuroses; in fact, I believe that we have a duty not to. But we cannot walk away from ourselves. Who else is there to become?

From Colm Toibin

The only routine I have is that I finish everything I start. I wake up early every day - about 6.30 A.M. - but I do not work every day. I could laze for a day or two, but I wouldn't do it for three.

From Colm Toibin

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.

From Colm Toibin

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.

From Colm Toibin

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.

From Colm Toibin

Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.

From Colm Toibin

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.

From Colm Toibin

Colm Toibin

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