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Watching them watching us, I wondered if they had the slightest clue what to expect in Australia. I supposed they knew they'd be living an undergroun… - Steve Toltz
" "Watching them watching us, I wondered if they had the slightest clue what to expect in Australia. I supposed they knew they'd be living an underground existence, exploited in brothels, factories, building sites, restaurant kitchens, and by the fashion industry, who would get them sewing their fingers to the bone. But I doubted they were aware of the adolescent competition among political leaders to see who had the toughest immigration policies, the kind you wouldn't want to meet down a dark alley. Or that public opinion ws already set against them, because even if you're running for your life you still have to wait in line, or that Australia, like everywhere, excelled in making arbitrary distinctions between people seem important.
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About Steve Toltz
Steve Toltz (born 1972 in Sydney) is an Australian novelist.
Also Known As
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Stephen Toltz
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Additional quotes by Steve Toltz
Look, Jasper," Dad said as we settled on a bench. "It's about time you found out how your grandparents fucked up, so you can work out what you did with the failures of your antecedents: did you run with them or ricochet against their errors, instead making your own huge gaffes in an opposing orbit? We all crawl feebly away from our grandparents' graves with their sad act of dying ringing in our ears, and in our mouths we have the aftertaste of their grossest violation against themselves: the shame of their unlived lives. It's only the steady accumulation of regrets and failures and our shame of our unlived lives that opens the door to understanding them. If by some quirk of fate we led charmed lives, bounding energetically from one masterful success to another, we'd never understand them! never!
I'm only sorry I was born three-quarters through this self-inflicted tragedy and not at the very beginning or at the very end. I'm fucking sick of watching this tragedy in slow motion. The other planets aren't though - they're on the edge of their suns. The reason we've never had visitors from outer space isn't that they don't exist but that they don't want to know us. We're the village idiots of all the teeming galaxies. On. quiet night you can hear their cackled laughter. And what are they laughing at? Let me put it this way: humanity is the guy who shits in his own pants and then walks around saying, 'So, do you like my new shirt?'
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As it was my first time in a foreign country, my eyes soaked it up - but I'll save you the travelogue description. It's Thailand. You know the sights, you know the smells. You've read the books, you've seen the movies. Hot, sticky, sweaty, it smelled of spicy food, and everywhere there lurked the hint of drugs and prostitution, because like most travelers, we had brought our preconceived notions with us on the journey and did not check them, as we should have, into immigration as hazardous materials best suited for quarantine.
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