Colm Toibin Quotes

Recovery is an ongoing project that is really discrete from everything else in my life. It allows me to be an agent, allows me to write, allows me to be married, allows me to be part of a family. The writing is not a support beam of recovery but a happy consequence of it.

I haven't always been the person I am today. I came into loving myself more than anything or anyone else.

You can run, run, run away from a lot of things in life, but you can't run away from yourself. And the key to happiness is to understand and accept who you are.

People should accept being single, because those are the moments you can really focus on yourself, and learning who you are. Then when you get in a relationship, you will be stronger and have a little bit more self-awareness, self-love, and the other ingredients for a healthy relationship.

I want to stop transforming and just start being.

Being self-critical is good; being self-hating is destructive. There's a very fine line there somewhere, and I walk it carefully.

People let their own hang-ups become the obstacles between them and personal happiness.

It took a lot of years of me on my own, coaching myself, to look in the mirror and love the reflection.

It's really hard to foster self-love; it really is. I think a lot of people who claim that they do have a definite lack of self-loathing are either lying or just in a place that I don't relate to.

I'm getting older and I'm just coming to terms that I'm stuck with me so I better try to like myself.

Self-love is not something that you get in one day or two days. It's an ongoing process, and I go through it every day.

I think that there is a tragic misfit at the core of me, and I've just done a lot of work on myself. I love a good self-help book; I've read a ton of them. I love self-help seminars and therapy and all that. I think that probably, at my core, if I had done no work on myself, I would probably be Laura from The Mysteries Of Laura, but I worked hard to be a more stable person because that's what I wanted out of my life.

The disease we all have and that we have to fight against all our lives is ... the disease of self.

The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself.

My personality doesn't interest me.

What you are comes to you.

Certainly, I devote my energy to both telling my personal life story and seeking self- obliteration. However, I will not destroy myself through art.

Well. I'm probably not loving myself like I should, but I'm really trying.

When I was married, I wasn't loving myself. Now I'm in love with myself. I will get married again.

Being in therapy is great. I spend an hour just talking about myself. It's kinda like being the guy on a date.

The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life.

While I have always, felt like an outsider, it's because of the professional choices I have made, so it's not like I am planning to throw myself a giant pity party.

Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.

I really have no interest in myself.

I can live with myself.