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
years speak-english people
I first went to Barcelona in 1975 after university, and I stayed for three years. I learnt Catalan because that's what everyone speaks in the mountains. They speak English to foreigners, but what people say to each other is much more important than what they say to you.
book important fourth
It is important to find a publisher and equally important not to be noticed until your third or fourth book.
book thinking offering
I think you can get a sort of intensity and an edginess offering nine stories in a book. Competing versions of things.
thinking play fiction
I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen.
determination writing mean
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.
father age difficult
Between the ages of 8 and 12 it was difficult to know what my father was saying, and he moved very slowly, and then he died.
writing taught
John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.
barcelona minus
'One Minus One' and 'Barcelona, 1975' are more or less autobiographical.
block ideas long
Writer's block! It doesn't exist. You just long for ideas to go away so you have an idea of peace.
art writing play
Anyone who works in the arts knows, if you're writing a novel or a play or anything, you have to be ready for someone to say, 'Your time is up.'
song writing roots
The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and painting, as much as from the need to impart mere information, or mirror anything. I am not a realist writer, even if I seem like one.
treasure matter sides
It really matters to writers to find and treasure readers, all the more when they're on the other side of the world.
religious parent catholic
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.
country reading past
It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of the need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present.