Author

In my 20s, as I began to travel in Europe, I found comfort in religious paintings. Even though my own belief in Catholic dogma had been shaken and weakened, I found that the beauty and the richness of the art still held me.

From Colm Toibin

The old Victorian laws against homosexuality were still on the statute books until the early 1990s. As a gay man living in Ireland, I and people like me found it easy to feel less than citizens.

From Colm Toibin

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.

From Colm Toibin

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.

From Colm Toibin

John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.

From Colm Toibin

Look at Austen. In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then a period of solitude. No flashbacks and no backstory. Let's have no more back story!

From Colm Toibin

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.

From Colm Toibin

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.

From Colm Toibin

When a book comes from the publisher and you see it for the first time... Of course it's not remotely like seeing a baby for the first time, but I can remember with each book what room I was in when I opened it. That would be excitement, though, I think. Not pride.

From Colm Toibin

I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point.

From Colm Toibin

Colm Toibin

Notable Quotes

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