Steve Toltz

“Are you listening, Jasper? Sometimes you'll be walking in the city late at night, and a woman walking in front of you will spin her head around and then cross the street simply because some members of your gender rape women and molest children!”

“I am influenced by books which don't have their eye on the endgame, but which try to be entertaining on each and every page.”

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

“Regrets came up and asked me if I’d like to own them. Declined them for the most part but took a few just so I wouldn’t leave this relationship empty handed.”

“Sometimes they [people] throw off their freedom so quickly, you'd think it was burning them.”

“People always say, 'Write what you know', but I've always found that to be terrible advice. It's quite limiting, what you know.”

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

“If I've written five pages by hand, out of those five pages, one page might be worth saving. The rest is crap. I have to throw it away. It's like I need eight hours to do two hours' work.”

“I don't 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.”

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

“I think as you get older, there are things that there's just no light side to, but you know, I guess the more you empathise with people, the more empathy you have, the less you are able to see the lighter side.”

“Optimism isn't funny unless you are laughing at the person, whereas extreme pessimism is extremely funny. It's exaggeration.”

“If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment.”

“I enjoy being influenced by other writers.”