The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and painting, as much as from the need to impart mere information, or mirror anything. I am not a realist writer, even if I seem like one.

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.

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 Quotes