Steve Toltz Quotes

I've been labelled many times - a criminal, an anarchist, a rebel, sometimes human garbage, but never a philosopher, which is a pity because that's what I am. I chose a life apart from the common flow, not only because the common flow makes me sick but because I question the logic of the flow, and not only that - I don't know if the flow exists! Why should I chain myself to the wheel when the wheel itself might be a construct, an invention, a common dream to enslave us?

Or about how when you're a child, to stop you from following the crowd you're assaulted with the line "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" but when you're an adult and to be different is suddenly a crime, people seem to be saying, "Hey. Everyone else is jumping off a bridge. Why aren't you?

Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.

When we finished the kiss she said laughing, I can taste your loneliness - it tastes like vinegar. That annoyed me. Everyone knows loneliness tastes like cold potato soup.

Sometimes they [people] throw off their freedom so quickly, you'd think it was burning them.

There’s nothing wonderful or interesting about unrequited love. I think it’s shitty, just plain shitty. To love someone who doesn’t return your affections might be exciting in books, but in life it’s unbearably boring. I’ll tell you what’s exciting: sweaty, passionate nights. But sitting on the veranda outside the home of a sleeping woman who isn’t dreaming about you is slow moving and just plain sad.

There are men put on this earth to make laws designed to break the spirits of men. There are those put here to have their spirits broken by those put here to break them. Then there are those who are here to break the laws that break the men who break the spirits of other men. I am one of those men. - Harry West

When you put so much effort to forget someone, the effort itself becomes a memory. Then you have to forget the forgetting, and that too is memorable.

I think that's the real loss of innocence: the first time you glimpse the boundaries that will limit your potential.

I was so happy I wanted to fold all the people into paper airplanes and fly them into the lidless eye of that big yellow moon.

The game is an analogy for life: there are not enough chairs or good times to go around, not enough food, not enough joy, nor beds nor jobs nor laughs nor friends nor smiles nor money nor clean air to breathe...and yet the music goes on.

I don't have a great respect for reality or getting the 'facts' as a means of putting together a story.

You experience life alone, you can be as intimate with another as much as you like, but there has to be always a part of you and your existence that is incommunicable; you die alone, the experience is yours alone, you might have a dozen spectators who love you, but your isolation, from birth to death, is never fully penetrated.

Amen' is like the Send button on an email.

Losers blame their parents; Failures blame their kids.

Regrets came up and asked me if I’d like to own them. Declined them for the most part but took a few just so I wouldn’t leave this relationship empty handed.

That's how we slide, and while we slide we blame the world's problems on colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, corporatism, stupid white men, and America, but there's no need to make a brand name of blame. Individual self-interest: that's the source of our descent, and it doesn't start in the boardrooms or the war rooms either. It starts in the home.

I didn't think anyone who had to demand respect ever got it.

To have a child is to be impaled daily on the spike of responsibility.

Don't be afraid to have nothing.

People carry their secrets in hidden places, not on their faces. They carry suffering on their faces. Also bitterness if there’s room.

Fear of death is understandable, being that we are all going to die, but fear of life and suffering is more of an irrational fear because it's something that can be avoided. The torturous part is that suffering can be avoided if you have good luck. That's somewhat out of our hands, but is it? I don't know. "Is bad luck self-harm by another name?"

Optimism isnt funny unless you are laughing at the person, whereas extreme pessimism is extremely funny. Its exaggeration.

The universe doesn't really care if you bounce back. It doesn't feel that weird to write about paralysis or being in hospital or losing a child or, you know, splitting up with your wife, because that's just life.

The moment seemed endless, but it was probably only half that.