Literary Birthday – 30 May – Colm Tóibín

Happy Birthday, Colm Tóibín, born on 30 May 1955.

Colm Tóibín Quotes

1. 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.
2. I do not care much about the mysteries of the universe, unless they come to me in words, or in music maybe, or in a set of colours, and then I entertain them merely for their beauty and only briefly.
3. 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.
4. Finish everything you start. Often, you don’t know where you’re going for a while; then halfway through, something comes and you know. If you abandon things, you never find that out.
5. [The biggest myth about writing] is that there’s any wildness attached to it. Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.
6. When you’re writing, you should be bent over, and you need to be in pain and your shoulders should be bent — you need to be pulling things up from within yourself. You can’t be too comfortable.

Read: Colm Tóibín’s 10 Rules for Writing Fiction

Colm Tóibín is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and, most recently, poet. He is is known for exploring changing social norms in 20th-century Ireland. He is the author of 11 novels including The Blackwater Lightship, The Master, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary, Nora Webster, House of Names, and The Magician. His work has been shortlisted for The Booker Prize three times, has won the Costa Novel Award and the IMPAC Award. He has also published two collections of stories and many works of non-fiction. He was selected as the Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2011 Tóibín published a memoir, A Guest at the Feast. That same year he won the Irish PEN Award for his contribution to Irish literature. Visit colmtoibin.com

Source for Image: Author’s Website

by Amanda Patterson

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