“People's interest in glamour and clothes and nylon stockings and all t...” — Colm Toibin Quote

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.

In my 20s, as I began to travel in Europe, I found comfort in religious paintings. Even though my own belief in Catholic dogma had been shaken and weakened, I found that the beauty and the richness of the art still held me.

I've never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it's not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory is very much the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more.

It is important to find a publisher and equally important not to be noticed until your third or fourth book.

People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.

I told my boys this: Somebody gotta be better than Michael Jordan. Why not you?

We talk sometimes about the impact we hope we're having, that little girls - and boys - at home are watching us on TV. We can be role models.

When I'm not working, you'll find me down the play park or on the Tube with my Converse on and a muslin cloth in my hand, wiping my boy's snotty nose.

I came up with, 'I am a lost boy from Neverland, usually hanging out with Peter Pan' and recorded that simple line on my phone. I watched it back and thought it was kinda cheesy, and I was actually going to delete it. But I thought 'Whatever, it's catchy.'