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

Steve Toltz

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Steve Toltz
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: January 1
Novelist
Writer
Sydney
NSW
Stephen Toltz
Pianos
Sometimes
Effortless
Exhausting
Lifting
Piano
Relationship
Talking
Times

More quotes by Steve Toltz

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Sometimes I think the human animal doesn't really need food or water to survive, only gossip.
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I haven't been part of the criminal world.
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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.
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My writing goal is just this desperation to get as much done as possible. It's never a comfortable, relaxed thing. Especially because I know so much of the story that I want to tell and I feel so far away from the end. Actually feels a hundred years away, and every hour I'm not working is another hour away from finishing.
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I don't have a great respect for reality or getting the 'facts' as a means of putting together a story.
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Generally as a rule I am not. Unless I am super in love with a particular author, because I just want to read masterpieces. I just want to read one amazing book after another. As a completist you are generally reading the bad ones.
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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?
Steve Toltz
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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.
Steve Toltz
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On the one hand I'm writing about somebody about whom I say in the book, The only thing worse than being a statistic is being a statistical anomaly. So I'm writing about a particularly unlucky person. So that's a special type of hell, to be particularly unlucky.
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[I'll teach you] how not to leave the windows of your heart open when it looks like rain and how everyone has a stump where something necessary was amputated.
Steve Toltz
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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.
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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
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I enjoy being influenced by other writers.
Steve Toltz
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Optimism isnt funny unless you are laughing at the person, whereas extreme pessimism is extremely funny. Its exaggeration.
Steve Toltz
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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.
Steve Toltz
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Friendships are an unforseeable burden.
Steve Toltz
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I write fiction, there's no guarantee that what I say is truthful.
Steve Toltz
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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.
Steve Toltz
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Don't be afraid to have nothing.
Steve Toltz
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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.
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