Steve Toltz

Friendships are an unforseeable burden.

— Steve Toltz

“Don't touch me, you fat ghost!”

— Steve Toltz

Don't be afraid to have nothing.

— Steve Toltz

“there’s freedom in looking crazy.”

— Steve Toltz

“Love is hard work.”

— Steve Toltz

“existence is humiliation, anyway.”

— Steve Toltz

Amen' is like the Send button on an email.

— Steve Toltz

“The past is truly an inoperable tumour that spreads to the present.”

— Steve Toltz

“When it comes to taking your own life, preparation is procrastination.”

— Steve Toltz

I enjoy being influenced by other writers.

— Steve Toltz

I haven't been part of the criminal world,

— Steve Toltz

“People are not mysterious because they never shut up!”

— Steve Toltz

“To my horror principles have wormed their way into [the] fabric of my being.”

— Steve Toltz

I can't sit through dinner with somebody I don't like.

— Steve Toltz

When people come up to me and say, 'I read your book,' I'm thinking, 'How dare you! Who gave you a copy?'

— Steve Toltz

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

— Steve Toltz

When you put so much effort to forget someone, the effort itself becomes a memory. Then you have to forget the forgetting,…

— Steve Toltz

“It made no sense to me that people would hate the very thing they aspired to become.”

— Steve Toltz

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

— Steve Toltz

Raymond Chandler I love a lot, and the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. I really love his voice.

— Steve Toltz

Sometimes I think the human animal doesn't really need food or water to survive, only gossip.

— Steve Toltz

“The futility of the attempt was obvious; when you put in that much effort to forget someone, the effort itself becomes a…

— Steve Toltz

“I have too much free time. Free time makes people think; thinking makes people morbidly self-absorbed; and unless you are watertight and…

— Steve Toltz

“Don’t be sad for me unless you’re prepared to be sad your whole lives. Otherwise forget it. What good’s a couple of…

— Steve Toltz

He pointed the gun at me. Then he looked up at my hand & tilted his head slightly. - Journey, he said.…

— Steve Toltz

After all, memory may be the only thing on earth we can truly manipulate to serve us, so we don't have to…

— Steve Toltz

There's nothing perplexing to me about a leafy shrub evolving out of the big bang, but that the post office exists because…

— Steve Toltz

Or about how when you're a child, to stop you from following the crowd you're assaulted with the line "If everyone jumped…

— Steve Toltz

I have that sort of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David/George Costanza thing where people are like, "How did you feel writing such…

— Steve Toltz

I think as you get older, there are things that there's just no light side to, but you know, I guess the…

— Steve Toltz

I believe everything is autobiographical. If it's not strictly about you, it's your peers, your obsessions, things that make you angry, or…

— Steve Toltz

“While Terry joined the others in the pool, I subjected myself to a dreadful thing called musical chairs, another cruel game. There's…

— Steve Toltz

I was in the hospital and I was paralyzed and I went through all of these things. I've had all of these…

— Steve Toltz

I try to outline. I'm a lazy outliner. I will put the points down of each chapter or series of chapters, but…

— Steve Toltz

“The problem is most of the time when God’s supposed to be the hero, he comes across as the villain. I mean,…

— Steve Toltz

If you wanted to pursue some kind of artistic pursuit and you had another career, then you would definitely fall back on…

— Steve Toltz

“I’ll teach you how to decipher all the confused faces by closing your eyes & how to cringe when someone says the…

— Steve Toltz

“Betrayal wears a lot of different hats. You don’t have to make a show of it like Brutus did, you don’t have…

— Steve Toltz

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

— Steve Toltz

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

— Steve Toltz