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Colm Toibin Quotes
Colm Toibin Quotes
Colm Toibin
Irish
Novelist
Born:
May 30
,
1955
First
People
Think
Time
Writing
You
Related authors:
Elizabeth Bowen
Frank Delaney
George A. Moore
James Joyce
John Banville
Laurence Sterne
Maeve Binchy
Robert Graves
When I was 19, I thought I wanted to be an English civil servant. It was the most exotic thing at the time - can you imagine, in the middle of the IRA bombing campaigns? I saw an ad inviting Irish applicants for an induction course, so I signed up.
Colm Toibin
Time
You
Thought
Saw
Signed
Civil
Civil Servant
Inviting
Most
Course
IRA
Up
Campaigns
Exotic
Irish
Middle
Wanted
English
Servant
Bombing
Thing
Ad
Imagine
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.
Colm Toibin
Though
About
Rather
More
Never
Put
Come
Wrote
Because
Territory
South
Sell
Ireland
Very
Than
North
Northern
Northern Ireland
Republic
Might
Much
Even
Novel
Imaginative
You have to keep writing. It's almost like practice, almost like tennis, that actually after a few days of not writing, first of all it makes you slightly depressed and uneasy, but it also affects the style when you start up again. You need to get the show on the road.
Colm Toibin
You
Writing
First
Practice
Style
Few
Slightly
Tennis
Road
Almost
Days
Like
Also
First Of All
Makes
Affects
Up
Uneasy
Get
After
Again
Depressed
Show
Keep
Actually
Start
Start-Up
Need
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
Work
Time
Wait
Defining
Lies
More
Attempting
Know
Readers
Another
Narrative
Narratives
Always
Go
Historian
Historians
Intelligent
May
Grand
While
Sweeping
Tone
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.
Colm Toibin
History
Free
Country
Reading
Past
Own
Thinking
Enough
Else
Everything
Everything Else
Way
Ways
Find
No Country
About
Inspiring
Study
Study History
New
Sake
Ambiguity
New Ways
May
Including
Nuance
Present
Need
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