116 Quotes by Steve Toltz

That’s how we slide, and while we slide we blame the world’s problems on colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, corporatism, stupid white men, and America, but there’s no need to make a brand name of blame. Individual self-interest: that’s the source of our descent, and it doesn’t start in the boardrooms or the war rooms either. It starts in the home.

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

I couldn’t get my head around it. She’d lied to me! She had lied to me! Me! I was supposed to be the liar in this relationship!

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.

Democracy in crime was turning out no different from democracies everywhere: a sublime idea in theory, soiled by the reality that deep down nobody really believes that all men are created equal.

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.

Don’t be afraid to have nothing.

Problem is, Jews don’t believe in hell, so there isn’t the same readily accessible chamber of fear the Catholics have up their sleeve to poison the nervous system of their youth. You can’t turn to a young Jewish boy and say, “You see that pit of fire? That’s where you’re going.

I resisted a strong impulse to pluck out my eye and show it to them.