Colm Toibin quote: "I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen."

The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.
JIM HARRISON

I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES

She buys "mixed salad greens" for seven dollars a bag, triple-washed with who knows what. And to get...
RUDOLPH DELSON

Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an...
LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD

Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tootin...
MARGARET ATWOOD

Israel is the canary in the mine. What happens to Israel will eventually happen to America itself.
DAVID HOROWITZ

I sometimes fall into the trap of doing what I think I should be doing rather than what I want to be...
BJORK

What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do.
PAT BARKER

The interesting thing about life is, there is what you think is going to happen, and what actually h...
MIKE MYERS

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to impro...
BILL BEATTIE

The idea in The Man that Would Be King was that the music should recreate all that majestic surround...
MAURICE JARRE

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think -- rather to impr...
JOHN DEWEY

Almost any illiquid asset today lends itself well to moving onto the blockchain and becoming tokeniz...
DAVID O. SACKS

Fiction has the ability to show us what we don’t know and what doesn’t happen.
JAVIER MARíAS

You should stick with what you enjoy, what you find funny -- that's the humor that will be the stron...
BILL WATTERSON

I mean you ACRES of harm,' Dalrymple growled. 'Untold QUANTITIES of harm. I will visit a whole CONTI...
DEREK LANDY

What is the point of the army without weapons? ... Korean government should concentrate on arming it...
JOHN KIM

This is a program-driven park rather than an athletically driven park. The topography of the site na...
JIM EBY

That consistency has lent itself to quality football teams and quality programs and traditions that ...
CHUCK EVANS

I happen to think we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest id...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Critics have their purposes, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a littl...
DUKE ELLINGTON

What matters is the one thing I do know for certain: God is with me.
CRAIG GROESCHEL

I think the least important thing about science fiction for me is its predictive capacity. Its recor...
WILLIAM GIBSON

I think the state needs to step up and help cover rising fuel costs rather than pass it through to t...
DWAYNE NIELSON

Science fiction writers put characters into a world with arbitrary rules and work out what happens.
RUDY RUCKER

Critics have their purposes, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a l...
DUKE ELLINGTON

What happens to other people does not necessarily will happen to you.
DANIEL MELGAçO

In the two-room flat where I live in Japan, I try to take time every day to step away from the bomba...
PICO IYER

I think that Liverpool's particular modern history lends itself to the cinema better than London...
RHYS IFANS

75% of what happens to Paul Gascoigne in his life is fiction.
GLEN HODDLE

He knew our system so well. He knew what plays to run and what to stick with.
DANNY MEDINA

I think what's always been interesting to me than the science and the criminality with this job ...
GEORGE EADS

I think what will happen is that fiction will become more like poetry. As in, the only people who re...
GARY SHTEYNGART

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you...
BRIAN TRACY

Yes, I do come with certain reservations, and I'm not OK with certain things, but rather than fo...
YAMI GAUTAM

Well, with prophecy you got to see what happens.
GEORGE NOORY

It's truly not what we expect of him and look if he plays he plays and hopefully comes through. He m...
MARK THOMPSON

You don't tell an astronaut what to do.
ATMOSPHERE

Human is what he decides to be.
ZAMAN ALI

You gotta pay your dues to sing the blues.
CAROL PLUM-UCCI

You're supposed to be kind to everyone, because you never know when you're meeting an angel.
CAROL PLUM-UCCI

Well, I don't think we should go to the moon. I think we maybe should send some politicians up t...
RON PAUL

The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual ...
ROBERTSON DAVIES

You'll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that.
ROALD DAHL

I think it's tough to bet against a healthy Jason Kidd. That's just what I believe. Especially with ...
BRIAN SCALABRINE

I think that the district would be well-advised to do a little bit more legwork to make sure they fu...
ANNE BROWN

What science fiction does is take what might be possible someday and examine what might happen if it...
GARDNER DOZOIS

I was a bit of a goofball. I was always silly. I think that lends itself to being an actor.
ROB MCCLURE

Singing in Gaelic is very, very natural to do. I think lends itself very much so to being sung.
ENYA

I think the best endings bring you back in rather than close things off with absolute finality. I...
T. C. BOYLE

Well, I think the main message is there is more to your story. There is more than what happens betwe...
MAX LUCADO

and take the ironmen in the rear while they are beating off what they think is my main thrust up the...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

For every fatal shooting, there are about 3 non-fatal shootings. Folks, this is unacceptable in Amer...
GEORGE W. BUSH

I think a lot of contemplation happens in bathtubs. It does for me. Nothing like a hot bath to ease ...
SARAH MCLACHLAN

I'm not lonely, and I think that has a lot to do with what's on my bedside table rather than...
MICHELLE WILLIAMS

The ideal mother, like the ideal marriage, is a fiction.
MILTON R. SAPIRSTEIN

Let whatever happens, be what needs to happen, so that I may awaken.
T. SCOTT MCLEOD

I really can't say what's going to happen until we see what happens.
GENE MANCINI JR

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
RENE DESCARTES

People say it's not what happens in your life that matters, it's what you think happened. But this q...
GEOFF DYER

The game lends itself to fantasies about our abilities.
PETER ALLISS

We don't look at things as done in the past because we are continuing to work. If we think something...
ALEX LENAHAN

Rather than just mimic processes in nature, I think we can harness the powers of nature itself and a...
MAGNUS LARSSON

Spending time with the military certainly lends itself to some remarkable experiences, and I've ...
SIMON SINEK

That's the good thing about it. Nothing counts except what's goin' on around you.
H.L. DAVIS

What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is...
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

Contentment is what should be our focus rather than expecting miracles
SUNDAY ADELAJA

what happens when a world destroys itself and must rebuild.
TERRY BROOKS

I think they're seeing it. I think people are seeing the enormous cost of housing versus what people...
CONNIE PASCALE

I'd rather be dead and in heaven than afraid to do what I think is right.
CHARLES EVERS

Iam always content with what happens,for i know that what God chooses is always better than what i c...
EPICTETUS

There is a lot of absurdity sometimes, not just in Mormonism but often in other religions that want ...
NEIL LABUTE

I learned a lot from him. But we won a Super Bowl without him -- that's what happens when you have a...
DEION BRANCH

is a signal of things to come rather than a bad thing itself. That's what is so troubling.
LEILA AHMED

The seed John planted with me is to be more proactive with what we want to have happen, and write it...
SCOTT CHASE

I don't think that the administration is being particularly honest with the American people about wh...
JANEANE GAROFALO

This is not an issue that can be just set aside and placed on the shelf. This is a true emergency. I...
ANNA ESHOO

I think that we as a people are always prone to think about, well, tomorrow will be a better day. We...
BOBBY KNIGHT

If it goes down to 11 rather than 12 we've just got to see what happens. I'm just taking it game by ...
JEETAN PATEL

Between the time I was 16 until I was about 20, the books I read were by people like Thomas Mann, Ja...
COLM TOIBIN

When I was 19, I thought I wanted to be an English civil servant. It was the most exotic thing at th...
COLM TOIBIN

Look at Austen. In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then...
COLM TOIBIN

You create a world away from home and make new rooms for yourself. But when you arrive back home in ...
COLM TOIBIN

I lived in the Republic of Ireland. I wrote a book about the North but as an outsider. The hatreds t...
COLM TOIBIN

I write with a sort of grim determination to deal with things that are hidden and difficult, and thi...
COLM TOIBIN

I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long noteboo...
COLM TOIBIN

I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.
COLM TOIBIN

Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can.
COLM TOIBIN

The best thing about New York is working late into the night. At 1 in the morning on a Saturday, to ...
COLM TOIBIN

The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and pa...
COLM TOIBIN

History is a way of interpreting, rather than, say, knowing, the past. It is usually a set of disput...
COLM TOIBIN

In Ireland, novels and plays still have a strange force. The writing of fiction and the creation of ...
COLM TOIBIN

It was like hiking into a Hemingway story; everything was sepia-toned and bristling with subtext.
LESLIE WHAT

I did think of becoming a priest quite late on, when other boys were thinking of knocking over fence...
COLM TOIBIN

I'm slightly influenced by sport in that I like the idea of trying, like an athlete, to keep abs...
COLM TOIBIN

I don't think we have a right to enjoy our neuroses; in fact, I believe that we have a duty not ...
COLM TOIBIN

Everyone who's in America spends the first few years not experiencing it. The person is frighten...
COLM TOIBIN

The Roman Catholic Church and its rituals were so much part of life that, although my parents would ...
COLM TOIBIN

It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no ...
COLM TOIBIN

I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen.

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Colm Toibin

I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen.

Colm Toibin

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