Top 100 Colm Quotes
#1. Jesper Llewellyn Fahey, that is enough!" Colm roared. (...)
Inej cocked her head to one side. "Jesper Llewellyn Fahey?"
"Shut up," said Jesper. "It's a family name."
Inej made a solemn bow. "Whatever you say, Llewellyn.
Leigh Bardugo
#2. When my friends were besotted with Jason Donovan, my heroes were Colm O'Rourke and Barney Rock
John B. Keane
#3. I lost a lot of friends at the hands of the British Army. The person who actually introduced me to my wife, Colm Keenan, was murdered by the British Army. He was a member of the IRA, but he was unarmed.
Martin McGuinness
#4. Gabrielle turned to Colm. "These men will be of interest to you."
Colm looked them over. "Why is that?" he asked.
With her back to the infidels, she whispered, "They like to dig holes.
Julie Garwood
#5. Colm Feore. Newspaper column, Norwegian water. Column of steel, column of virtue, just for God's sake, Colm.
Colm Feore
#6. Colm sighed...
-She's quite beautiful. Like a fairy and a goddess all wrapped into one.
-How very... poetic of you.
...
He felt a sharp tug in the vicinity of his heart.
-And most accurate
He added
Colm & Graham
Donna Kauffman
#7. In the meantime, when I wake in the night, I want more. I want what happened not to have happened, to have taken another course.
Colm Toibin
#8. I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.
Colm Toibin
#9. I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.
Colm Toibin
#10. I remember too much; I am like the air on a calm day as it holds itself still, letting nothing escape.
Colm Toibin
#11. Time and patience would bring a snail to America,' he repeated.
Colm Toibin
#12. Colin Morgan gives a stunning performance in Parked; he plays Merlin in the BBC TV show and he says the two characters are like night and day. Watch him. He's got everything it takes to be top notch.
Colm Meaney
#13. If you're playing the a historical character that's in the public consciousness, then obviously you've got to make an effort to look like that person and there's a huge amount of historical record there that you have to kind of comply to.
Colm Meaney
#14. What is hard to understand is that our dreams matter
Colm Toibin
#15. We don't want anybody to come off half-cocked and make a decision about what we're only in the middle of doing, right? So if there's shots of me out there, then somebody's going to say, "Oh, that's not the right way. That's not this and that." It has to be seen in context.
Colm Feore
#16. John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.
Colm Toibin
#17. Life is but a day and expresses mainly a single note.
Colm Toibin
#18. A good comedy's very hard to make, so good comic writing I really enjoy.
Colm Meaney
#19. Solitude is good in the evening. Dublin is a quiet city when you get to a certain age, when your friends settle down and have kids. Nothing much happens here.
Colm Toibin
#20. 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 Toibin
#21. I think you can get a sort of intensity and an edginess offering nine stories in a book. Competing versions of things.
Colm Toibin
#22. When I was 19, I thought I wanted to be an English civil servant. It was the most exotic thing at the time - can you imagine, in the middle of the IRA bombing campaigns? I saw an ad inviting Irish applicants for an induction course, so I signed up.
Colm Toibin
#23. Memory and regret can mingle, how much sorrow can be held within, and how nothing seems to have any shape or meaning until it is well past and lost and, even then, how much, under the weight of pure determination, can be forgotten and left aside only to return in the night as piercing pain.
Colm Toibin
#24. I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write.
Colm Toibin
#25. Between the ages of 8 and 12 it was difficult to know what my father was saying, and he moved very slowly, and then he died.
Colm Toibin
#26. I kind of have an interest in all history. And I suspect it comes from being Irish - we like stories, we like telling stories, which makes a lot of us lean towards being writers or actors or directors.
Colm Meaney
#27. I played trombone for 10 minutes, and then I was in an accordion band in school for even less.
Colm Meaney
#28. I don't think we have a right to enjoy our neuroses; in fact, I believe that we have a duty not to. But we cannot walk away from ourselves. Who else is there to become?
Colm Toibin
#29. 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
#30. That was not even ten years ago, it might have been six or seven years ago, and if anyone had told her that she would be standing here now listening to this song and all the things that had happened between then and now, she would not have believed them.
Colm Toibin
#31. Normally when I'm sent a script I'll read it through to see how it hangs as a story and then I'll go back and read it through again and look at the character.
Colm Meaney
#32. Once more she noted the hectoring tone, as though she were a child, unable to make proper decisions.
Colm Toibin
#33. You never know what way life goes. Some of it makes no sense at all.
Colm Toibin
#34. The boy became a man and left home and became a dying figure on a cross. I want to be able to imagine that what happened to him will not come, it will see us and decide - not now, not them. And we will be left in peace to grow old.
Colm Toibin
#35. My old manager of the Irish National Theatre said 'Don't worry about being a star, just worry about being a working actor. Just keep working.' I think that's really good advice.
Colm Meaney
#36. The Roman Catholic Church and its rituals were so much part of life that, although my parents would often question a small matter of dogma and none of us seemed more religious than anyone else, no one ever questioned the rituals or the basic tenets of belief.
Colm Toibin
#37. I do probably 80 or 90 per cent of the cooking at home.
Colm Meaney
#38. There are so many burning issues to be dealt with that it's completely understandable and natural that a character is struggling with these issues themselves. In that struggle, you inform the audience. The thing about this writing is that it's very easy to learn. Good writing always is.
Colm Meaney
#39. There is little or no point being chair of the Labour Party and being ignored when engaging with Labour ministers when you're trying to articulate something that affects ordinary people in society.
Colm Keaveney
#40. From now on the architects would take over as the high preists of this bourgeois city.
Colm Toibin
#41. 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 Toibin
#42. Charm is an intangible. Chutzpah, charm, charisma, that kind of thing, you can't buy it. You either have it or you don't.
Colm Feore
#43. There's no reason not to be in television now. You get to live at home and you're not on the road all the time, they pay you decent money, and the writing's good. You're not compromising for it, you know.
Colm Meaney
#44. I first went to Barcelona in 1975 after university, and I stayed for three years. I learnt Catalan because that's what everyone speaks in the mountains. They speak English to foreigners, but what people say to each other is much more important than what they say to you.
Colm Toibin
#45. Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep - it can't be done abruptly.
Colm Toibin
#46. Eilis replied to say that it was not just Mrs Kehoe, who was not in any way extravagant, it was everyone in America, they all kept their heating on all night. As
Colm Toibin
#47. I think the whole business of people emigrating was that no one ever told them, although everyone knew, especially if it was to the United States, that it was forever, and the party before you left was called an 'American wake,' in the sense that they knew you wouldn't come back.
Colm Toibin
#48. The difference between the detailed plans he drew up and the house itself when finished, so filled with raked sea light, is the difference between the body and the soul, between musical notation and a song, between the idea for a drawing and the actual drawing itself.
Colm Txf3ibxedn
#49. The rest of the time he entertained all the guilt that wished to call, carried in by the wind through the darkness, to enter his spirit ...
Colm Toibin
#50. If you have to read to cheer yourself up, read biographies of writers who went insane.
Colm Toibin
#51. As I settled down to sleep in that new bed in the dark city, I saw that it was too late now, too late for everything. I would not be given a second chance. In the hours when I woke, I have to tell you that this struck me almost with relief.
Colm Toibin
#52. She thought it was strange that the mere sensation of savouring the prospect of something could make her think for a while that is must be the prospect of home.
Colm Toibin
#53. She noticed then that Conor was watching her.
'Are you going for a swim?' he asked her.
'In a while. Why don't you go down and check if it's warm enough?'
'And if it's not warm enough?'
'We'll still go in. But at least we'll know.
Colm Toibin
#54. I have,' Georgina said. 'I go home once a year to see my mam. It's a lot of suffering for a week. By the time I've recovered I have to go back. But I love seeing them all. We're not getting any younger, any of us, so it's nice to spend a week together.
Colm Toibin
#55. On '24,' it says on the front page of your script: 'This script is for the production staff and cast. Please don't show it to anybody else.'
Colm Feore
#56. Wait until you're old, Nora," she said, "and then you'll know. It's the mixture of being content with even the smallest thing and then feeling a great dissatisfaction with everything.
Colm Toibin
#57. I still have a stammer that I can control by not opening a sentence with a hard consonant, or by concentrating for a moment, breathing softly down. Growing up, the 'Our Father' was lovely, made for me, the 'Hail Mary' was gorgeous, and 'Glory Be to the Father' was an absolute nightmare.
Colm Toibin
#58. 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.
Colm Toibin
#59. We keep our prices low and our manners high. -Miss Bartocci
Colm Toibin
#60. I'm slightly influenced by sport in that I like the idea of trying, like an athlete, to keep absolutely ready. That's an emotional thing, almost. I don't mean physically, although I play tennis. But you try to keep yourself ready.
Colm Toibin
#61. And, in return, when I get sick, you can come out and look after me when the others get fed up of me. That's what we are all for.
Colm Toibin
#62. I do dead Canadians. If he's dead and he's Canadian and he's famous, I'll be playing him at some point.
Colm Feore
#63. In skies of deepening blue the moon, heaven's queen was now afloat
Colm Toibin
#64. She explained to him that she had been homesick, and that Father Flood had inscribed her on the course as a way of making her busy, and how studying in the evening made her feel happy, or as happy as she had been since she had left home.
Colm Toibin
#65. I don't come out of an oral tradition, I come out of silence.
Colm Toibin
#66. Talking about the show reminds you of things that you went through. So it's fun. When the show was on, I couldn't have handled it. I didn't want that direct connection.
Colm Meaney
#67. We walk among them sometimes, the ones who have left us. They are filled with something that none of us knows yet. It is a mystery.
Colm Toibin
#68. People's interest in glamour and clothes and nylon stockings and all those things were, when I was a little boy, the sort of world that I listened to.
Colm Toibin
#69. I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen. And yes, I suppose I was interested in that story in the gap between memory itself, the real business of being alive, and the imagination.
Colm Toibin
#70. For the first time in years, he felt the deep sadness of exile, knowing that he was alone here, an outsider, and too alert to the ironies, the niceties, the manners, and indeed, the morals to be able to participate.
Colm Toibin
#71. He was delighted by things, as he was delighted by her, and he had done nothing else ever but make that clear.
Colm Toibin
#72. more she thought about it the more she came
Colm Toibin
#73. If water can be changed into wine and the dead can be brought back, then I want time pushed back.
Colm Toibin
#74. When a book comes from the publisher and you see it for the first time ... Of course it's not remotely like seeing a baby for the first time, but I can remember with each book what room I was in when I opened it. That would be excitement, though, I think. Not pride.
Colm Toibin
#75. It really matters to writers to find and treasure readers, all the more when they're on the other side of the world.
Colm Toibin
#76. And I told Father Flood that since I would already be getting my reward in heaven, I have that nicely arranged, thank you, he owes me a favour that I would like repaid on this earth.
Colm Toibin
#77. You have to keep writing. It's almost like practice, almost like tennis, that actually after a few days of not writing, first of all it makes you slightly depressed and uneasy, but it also affects the style when you start up again. You need to get the show on the road.
Colm Toibin
#78. For a while she was quietly resigned to the prospect that nothing would change, but she did not know what the consequences would be, or what form they would take.
Colm Toibin
#79. Describe character using dialogue. Describe character using what the characters see or do or think, but not what they had done or where they had been.
Colm Toibin
#80. She was lonely without Blunt, but she was lonelier at the idea that the world went on as though she had not loved him.
Colm Toibin
#81. If you don't make mistakes, they'll notice you and they'll get to like you,' she added. Eilis
Colm Toibin
#82. I suppose I look for humor in most situations because it humanizes things; it makes a character much more three-dimensional if there's some kind of humor. Not necessarily laugh-out-loud type of stuff, just a sense that there is a humorous edge to things. I do like that.
Colm Meaney
#83. The idea that what had happened could be erased, that the burden that was on her now could be lifted, that the past could be restored and could make its way effortlessly into a painless present.
Colm Toibin
#84. The only routine I have is that I finish everything I start. I wake up early every day - about 6.30 A.M. - but I do not work every day. I could laze for a day or two, but I wouldn't do it for three.
Colm Toibin
#85. Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up in a house of women.
Colm Toibin
#86. The digital revolution has changed the way we do things because you're not under that pressure that film is precious and film is expensive.
Colm Meaney
#87. Well, I didn't really know what to say. So maybe I should say that I have thought about you and I like you, I like seeing you, I care for you and maybe I love you too. And the next time if you tell me you love me, I'll
"
She stopped.
"You'll what?"
"I'll say I love you too.
Colm Toibin
#88. Even in the depths of dreadful situations, there's usually something rather comic, or something you can laugh about afterwards, at least. So, I do look for the comedy in those things.
Colm Meaney
#89. Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can.
Colm Toibin
#90. While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone.
Colm Toibin
#91. in this waking time his presence, once so solid, lacked any substance or form; it was merely a shadow at the edge of every moment of the day and night.
Colm Toibin
#92. 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.
Colm Toibin
#93. If words decorate the home of Being, then hands, and by extension art, are the sketch of Being.
Colm Gillis
#94. Well, I've always been a character actor, you know, and you always get your share of character actors who are bad guys. So it never surprises me. And if it's good writing, you can find your way into the part well enough.
Colm Meaney
#95. I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic throwaway fountain pen. Then I work on a word processor using a different desk and a different room.
Colm Toibin
#96. I'm pragmatic. If this is going to make sense, get me a job, and in the end let me put my kids through school. I'll play killers. But my kids always ask me, 'Do you die in this one, too, Daddy?'
Colm Feore
#97. I usually look at things like that from an audience perspective first, then have a closer look at the specific character they're talking about me for.
Colm Meaney
#99. 'One Minus One' and 'Barcelona, 1975' are more or less autobiographical.
Colm Toibin
#100. I usually read a script from an audience perspective first, and then look more closely at the character only.
Colm Meaney
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