112 Quotes by Colm Tóibín

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.

I did think of becoming a priest quite late on, when other boys were thinking of knocking over fences and going out with girls. I would have made a very good bishop: nice housekeeper, nice clothes – god, the clothes.

I’ve never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it’s not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory is very much the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more.

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

I was first in Sydney in 1993, and have been a few times since then. For someone who didn’t know Australia, it came as a shock how intelligent, interesting and funny the people were. If I lived there I might see it differently, but as a visitor it was a lot of fun.

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.

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

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

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