I still have a stammer that I can control by not opening a sentence with a hard consonant, or by concentrating for a moment, breathing softly down. Growing up, the 'Our Father' was lovely, made for me, the 'Hail Mary' was gorgeous, and 'Glory Be to the Father' was an absolute nightmare.

Colm Toibin

Categorized in : Moment Me Control Father

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

Colm Toibin

military running country

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

Colm Toibin

manipulation realizing writing

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.

Colm Toibin

strong suffering writing

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.

Colm Toibin

intelligent self lying

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

Colm Toibin

becoming ordinary way

If you have to read to cheer yourself up, read biographies of writers who went insane.

Colm Toibin

biographies insane cheer

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.

Colm Toibin

barcelona age writing

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

Colm Toibin

personality should should-have

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 manage.

Colm Toibin

regret pain attachment

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.

Colm Toibin

real home school

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

Colm Toibin

visuals strong imagination

She was lonely without Blunt, but she was lonelier at the idea that the world went on as though she had not loved him.

Colm Toibin

lonely world ideas

I work very deliberately, with a plan. But sometimes I come to a point that I planned as the end and it needs softening. Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep - it can't be done abruptly.

Colm Toibin

sleep children needs

I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.

Colm Toibin

fountain writing firsts

I do not know why it matters that I should tell the truth to myself at night, why it should matter that the truth should be spoken at least once in the world. Because the world is a place of silence, the sky at night when the birds have gone is a vast silent place. Words will make the slightest difference to the sky at night. They will not brighten it or make it less strange. And the day too has its own deep indifference to anything that is said.

Colm Toibin

differences sky night

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.

Colm Toibin

determination writing mean

It really matters to writers to find and treasure readers, all the more when they're on the other side of the world.

Colm Toibin

treasure matter world

Writer's block! It doesn't exist. You just long for ideas to go away so you have an idea of peace.

Colm Toibin

block long ideas

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.'

Colm Toibin

play writing art

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

Colm Toibin

taught writing