Steve Toltz Quotes

It's too late now," he said. "You can't stop a tidal wave of hatred once it's reached the shore.

Pride is the first thing you need to do away with in life. It's there to make you feel good about yourself. It's like putting a suit on a shriveled carrot and taking it out to the theater and pretending it's someone important. The first step in self-liberation is to be free of self-respect. I understand why it's useful for some. When people have nothing, they can still have their pride. That's why the poor were given the myth of nobility, because the cupboards were bare. Are you listening to me? This is important, Jasper. I don't want you to have anything to do with nobility, pride, or self-respect. They're tools to help you bronze your own head.

Even ugly people know beauty when they don't see it.

No, why air every ugly, negative, loopy, idiotic thought that floats through the head? That's why when you're standing by the harbor and your lover says, in a tender embrace, "What are you thinking about?" you don't respond, "That I hate people and I wish they'd fall down and never get up." I'm telling you. You just can't say it. I don't know much about women, but I do know that.

As I ran, I thought how I hate any kind of mob - I hate mobs of sports fans, mobs of environmental demonstrators, I even hate mobs of supermodels, that's how much I hate mobs. I tell you, mankind is bearable only when you get him on his own.

When people think your days are numbered, they're really very nice to you. It's only when you're trying to get on in the world that they bring their claws out.

Are you all following me? We puzzlingly overestimate our elected representatives. Don't overestimate me! I'll make blunder after stupid blunder! But it is necessary for you to know where I stand on certain contentious issues so you'll know what kind of blunders I'll be making. Well, I am certainly not on the right. I don't care if gays get married or get divorced. Not that I'm not for gay rights specifically. I'm just against the phrase 'family values.' In fact, when someone says the phrase 'family values,' I feel like I've been slapped in the face with a condom from 1953. Well, then, am I on the left? Sure, they're the first to sign petitions and in international affairs will always support the perceived underdog, even if the underdog is a bunch of cannibals - as long as they have less money and fewer resources - and these deeply caring individuals on the left will do anything for the betterment of the disenfranchised except make a personal sacrifice. So you see? I'm neither left nor right. But I'm just an ordinary person who goes to sleep feeling guilty every night.

Let me save you some time. There is no bottom. Despair is bottomless. You'll never get there, and that's why I know you'll never kill yourself. Not you. Only those attached to the trivial things take their own lives, but you never will. You see, a person who reveres life and family and all that stuff, he'll be the first to put his neck in a noose, but those who don't think too highly of their loves and possessions, those who know too well the lack of purpose of it all, they're the ones who can't so it. Do you know what irony is? Well, you just heard one. If you believe in immortality, you can kill yourself, but if you feel that life is a brief flicker between two immense voids to which humanity is unfairly condemned, you wouldn't dare. Look, Marty, you're in an untenable situation. You don't have the resources to live a full life, yet you can't bring yourself to die. So what do you do?

I believe that inequality is not the product of capitalism but the product of the fact that in a group of two men and one woman, one of the men will be taller and will have straighter teeth than the other, and he'll get the woman. Thus I believe that economics isn't the basis of inequality, straight teeth are!

When democracy works, the government does what the people want. The problem with that is that people want shitty things! People are scared and greedy and self-centered and only concerned about their financial security! Yes, the truth of the matter is THERE HAS YET TO BE A GREAT DEMOCRATIC NATION BECAUSE THERE HAS YET TO BE A GREAT BUNCH OF PEOPLE!

I have too much free time. Free time makes people think; thinking makes people morbidly self-absorbed; and unless you are watertight and flawless, excessive self-absorption leads to depression. That's why depression is the number-two disease in the world, behind Internet porn eyestrain.

I'm telling you, the whole of Australia went crazy. The national obsession became reform. I even think they understood that it wasn't the ideas themselves but the idea of the ideas, the idea that we might as well restlessly innovate and wherever possible obliterate our slavish connection with the past. Why? Because the past is always the worst thing happening to the present at any given time.

What a nasty act of cruelty, giving a dying man his last wish. Don't you realize he doesn't want it? His real wish is not to die.

At the other end of the packed carriage there was a commotion, and a small crowd formed a circle - bad news for someone. Circles of people always are. Honestly, sometimes I think human beings should be prohibited from forming groups. I'm no fascist, but I wouldn't mind at all if we had to live out our lives in single file.

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