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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creating a new identity can be challenging when returning to familiar places.
This quote reflects on the experience of personal growth and identity formation as one navigates different environments. Colm Toibin expresses how the new worlds we create for ourselves may feel less authentic when juxtaposed with the old, familiar settings of home, highlighting the tension between our evolving selves and our pasts that seem unchangeable.
Themes
IdentityHomeGrowthChangeBoarding School
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about personal growth after studying abroad, you might use this quote.
More from Colm Toibin
All quotes →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.
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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.
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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.
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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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