Quote

I write fiction, there's no guarantee that what I say is truthful.

Steve Toltz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Steve Toltz
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: January 1
Novelist
Writer
Sydney
NSW
Stephen Toltz
Guarantee
Truthful
Fiction
Write
Writing

More quotes by Steve Toltz

Image
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
Steve Toltz
Image
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.
Steve Toltz
Image
Don't be afraid to have nothing.
Steve Toltz
Image
We were on our way to the twentieth floor, sharing the elevator with two suits that had men inside them.
Steve Toltz
Image
There's nothing perplexing to me about a leafy shrub evolving out of the big bang, but that the post office exists because carbon exploded out of a supernova is a phenomenon so outrageous it makes my head twitch.
Steve Toltz
Image
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.
Steve Toltz
Image
...I wondered if it was blasphemous to tell God that rainbows are kitsch.
Steve Toltz
Image
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
Image
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.
Steve Toltz
Image
Friendships are an unforseeable burden.
Steve Toltz
Image
I don't have a great respect for reality or getting the 'facts' as a means of putting together a story.
Steve Toltz
Image
I enjoy being influenced by other writers.
Steve Toltz
Image
We're always sick and we just don't know it. What we mean by health is only when our constant physical deterioration is undetectable.
Steve Toltz
Image
I dont really have an office or anything, and I like to have to move location every two hours. So I just kind of write in a park, on a bench, in the library, in a cafe, back to the library, that kind of thing.
Steve Toltz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
As an artist you can use your own discomfort and neuroses and difficulties and at least transform them into something else. Without that you're just neurotic and uncomfortable.
Steve Toltz
Image
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
Image
[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
Image
There are a lot of artists that return to the same subject. Whether it's the natural subject, or the focus or the subconscious focus of their entire lives, it often is repeated.
Steve Toltz