Michael Szymczyk

“The rats at the door had gone away. I drank another bottle of wine. To think I was once rich. I once had money. I had everything but something.

I used to think that all people desire to be cared for; some are so used to it that they take it for granted, others, who never feel it, desire it so much that they constantly
need it. So much in fact, that when they don’t receive it they have outbursts, and in the end they wind up pushing away those people who in the end would have cared for them
as their heart desired within its innermost depths. So they are always alone, always on the edge of society, within it, but at the same time, apart from it. They are like spectators
watching with envy the dance of mankind, wishing for that one feeling that only another’s love can bring. A whisper
that speaks to one and only one and says:

“You truly are worth something.”

They never know that feeling that shines on some.

So they cease to expect and begin looking elsewhere for that…wonderful whisper of…

War.

Love almost seems like war.

The ancient Greeks used to say, ‘Love as if you will one day hate.’

I used to think that meant something very
pessimistic, that love was not real.

But really, man is just an animal anyway.

It’s not just about that though, the Greeks meant more. It’s like, ‘Live as if you will one day die.’ Do not take
for granted life, and for the Greeks, do not take for granted your love. After all, it really is something special. Even if it doesn’t last, it’s the moment that matters. How cliché, but
the problem with most men is that they learn words, rather than the concepts that the words signify. And life, death, love, are these not the most important things, those which
a man should learn before all else. And the moment…what of this, even in misery it still matters. But all we learn are words and a way to be.

God I love wine.”
― Michael Szymczyk

“In the silence, in the darkness of solitude, our
thoughts become the monsters that torment us like little children in the night.

I cannot tell myself this is a nightmare. O heaven high above me, how I wish…wish I were crazy, safe in some asylum, in a straightjacket…how I wish this were all made
up like a terrible dream…all to be awoken from with the swallowing of a little red and green pill.

But it is happening and no matter how hard I scratch and bite my flesh I will not wake up.

Silence.

Wer ist das? (The sound of breath, it takes me a minute to realize that it is mine own). Strange, but even then I do not know who that is.”
― Michael Szymczyk, Toilet: The Novel