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 ToibinRead
People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a disdain for the label of 'storyteller,' emphasizing that true writing originates from solitude rather than inherited tales.
Colm Toibin reflects on his aversion to being called a 'storyteller,' which he feels diminishes the originality and depth of his writing. He suggests that writing emerges from a place of silence and personal introspection rather than from traditional storytelling passed down through generations, highlighting the unique and often solitary process involved in creating literature.
Themes
WritingSilenceOriginalityStorytellingArt
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a workshop about creative writing to emphasize the importance of personal voice.
More from Colm Toibin
All quotes →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 ToibinRead
History is a way of interpreting, rather than, say, knowing, the past. It is usually a set of disputes between those who have access to the same sources. It depends on ideology as much as voting in an election does.
Colm ToibinRead
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 ToibinRead
It really matters to writers to find and treasure readers, all the more when they're on the other side of the world.
Colm ToibinRead
Everyone who's in America spends the first few years not experiencing it. The person is frightened by the newness of the place and doesn't see things. Her emotional universe becomes the entire universe. And then when she thinks of home, her distance in space can seem like a distance in time.
Colm ToibinRead
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