Colm Toibin Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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When I was 11, I realised that I did not have to live the life my mother had: school, marriage, children, apartment, summer house.
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It's great when a director like Cameron Crowe can take what you do and fit it into what he's doing. If someone's a fan of you already, they can take what you do and make it work for what they're doing. You don't know their vision, and you're thinking, 'How is this guy going to take what I do and make it work in this movie?'
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I was 21 in 1968, so I'm as much a child of the '60s as is possible to be. In those years the subject of religion had really almost disappeared; the idea that religion was going to be a major force in the life of our societies, in the West anyway, would have seemed absurd in 1968.
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If there's anything worse than being 16, it's having parents visibly reliving their own teenage years in your anguished presence.
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I've been very active all my life. I was a combat instructor in the Israeli Army.
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Tragedy is like strong acid - it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.
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I did not love reading, spelling, math and science. I struggled. I was a terrible speller.
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I always loved advertising. If I hadn't been in fashion, I'd have been in advertising.
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Television offered me the opportunity to do new things; I had written a lot of scripts other than scary movies. I had actually written some romantic comedies and stuff that I really wanted to try my hand at, and nobody would let me do that. Television allowed me to do anything I wanted.
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Vilification on the grounds of race or religion is always wrong. There's no place for inciting hatred within our Australia society.
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In Hollywood they're getting younger, but believe me, it's not the food. It's the plastic surgery.
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I consider science fiction and fantasy my genre. And I've noticed over the years that there doesn't tend to be a lot of lighthearted, comedic stuff.
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There are a lot of dynamics and a lot of politics that go into records and getting played on the radio.
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When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect toward others.
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Don't try to be like somebody else. You'll be miserable. You need to be yourself, and don't ever get a big head.
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I was the family alien. Both my parents are quite creative, but I was... appalling... always putting on little shows. I was rather a shy child, not a natural performer, but there was a performative edge to everything I did.
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I'm very grateful to God for what he gives me. Victories, remarkable victories, but you have to go through the defeats. That is why I praise God for everything.
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The only instrument I can play is piano. Whenever I make songs at home, I play the piano and make them on the piano.
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Someone said that life is a party. You join in after it's started and leave before it's finished.
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I was dealing with craft, and that's the surprising thing, the number of people who have literally broken down on our stage, because when you're talking about the thing that is most important to someone, they're liable to feel something strong.
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I stay at home a lot by choice but go out a lot due to work. As I've grown older, the simple pleasure of sitting on the couch with someone you love and watching a documentary is about as good as it gets for me.
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Whenever you went into any place where there was Michael Jackson footage at Sony, it was like going through Homeland Security.
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All the concessions we make to Eros are holes in our desire for the absolute.
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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.
