Toibin Books Quotes & Sayings

I consider the success of my day based on the seeds I sow, not the harvest I reap. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Don't look at the difficulties on your path. Focus on the opportunities ahead. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The old Victorian laws against homosexuality were still on the statute books until the early 1990s. As a gay man living in Ireland, I and people like me found it easy to feel less than citizens. — Colm Toibin

My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name is Irish and would not be familiar to English editors, one of them said: 'If she writes anything else, do let us know.' Slowly, very slowly, the books began to sell and be noticed. — Colm Toibin

Advertising is much less powerful than advertisers and critics of advertising claim, and advertising agencies are stabbing in the dark much more than they are practicing precision microsurgery on the public consciousness. — Michael Schudson

Between the time I was 16 until I was about 20, the books I read were by people like Thomas Mann, James Baldwin, Thom Gunn, Elizabeth Bishop. All gay, of course, although I swear I didn't know that at the time. Yet all of them, it turned out, had had a parent who died during their childhood. Sexuality is nothing compared to that. — Colm Toibin

I started working on trying to sound like June from the very beginning. — Reese Witherspoon

I never would have seen Chelsea reach up, take Logan's face in her hands, and kiss him. So the off again was definitely on again. And I knew then that Patrick was very wrong about my heart, because if it had actually been an encyclopedia I could have watched it all with perfect composure. — Marni Bates

There's an immense dramatic possibility in describing that universe. The books, for me, were an enormous relief in that sense of how they were written to allow primary emotion, elemental emotion, to matter enormously but to give the thing an extraordinary flow so you don't notice at what point that you're actually overwhelmed by this. There's no showiness, at all. It's the opposite of showiness. I think, if it was a painting, it could be very grey abstract, almost, with some lines and very, very beautiful. But you wouldn't have a notion of where the beauty was.
(Talking about the short stories of Alistair MacLeod, who he discovered while working on The Modern Library.) — Colm Toibin

Every time I thought to, I wrote about you. — Crystal Woods

We are in a time when the Peace Corps mission is more vital than ever, and the organization is at a 30-year high in the number of volunteers in the field. The Peace Corps is currently in 69 posts and serving 75 countries across the globe. — Kenny Marchant