Hsho > Hsho's Quotes

“I couldn't think of anything other than her and the components of her. For example, her red hair. But was I so primitive I let myself be bewitched by hair? I mean, really. Hair! It's just hair! Everyone has it! She puts it up, she lets it down. So what? And why did all the other parts of her have me wheezing with delight? I mean, who hasn't got a back, or a belly, or armpits? This whole finicky obsession serves to humiliate me even as I write it, sure, but I suppose it isn't that abnormal. That's what first love is all about. What happens is you meet a love object and immediately a hole inside you starts aching, the hole that is always there but you don't notice until someone comes along, plugs it up, and then runs away with the plug.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“I think that's the real loss of innocence: the first time you glimpse the boundaries that will limit your potential.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“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, A Fraction of the Whole

“Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“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.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“[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, A Fraction of the Whole

“Don't be afraid to have nothing.”
― Steve Toltz

“The moment seemed endless, but it was probably only half that.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“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.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“After all, memory may be the only thing on earth we can truly manipulate to serve us, so we don't have to look back at ourselves in the receding past and think, What an arsehole!”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“As I passed through the gates, the blistered hands of nostalgia gave my heart a good squeeze and I realized you miss shit times as well as good times, because at the end of the day what you're really missing is just time itself. ”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“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, A Fraction of the Whole

“Losers blame their parents; Failures blame their kids.”
― Steve Toltz

“Those books of mine really got under their skin. Ironically, they thought I was inhuman because of the way I churned through library books.
How do you know how to pick them? Who tells you?' Daved asked me once.
I explained that there was a line. 'If you read Dostoyevsky, he mentions Pushkin, and so you go and read Pushkin and he mentions Dante, and so you go and read Dante and--'
All right!'
All books are in some way about other books.'
I get it!”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“He pointed the gun at me. Then he looked up at my hand & tilted his head slightly.
- Journey, he said. I had forgotten I was still holding the book.
- Céline, I said back in a whisper.
- I love that book.
- I'm only halfway through.
- Have you got to the point where --
- Hey, kill me, but don't tell me the end!”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”
― John Anster, The First Part Of Goethe's Faust

“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose...

...Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”
― C.E.M. Joad

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
― Scott Adams

“You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.”
― Albert Einstein

“The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”
― Pablo Picasso

“Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss.”
― Banksy, Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.”
― Mikhail Bakunin

“Chance favors the prepared mind.”
― Louis Pasteur

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength.”
― Lawrence Clark Powell

“You build a thing of beauty, and then the peasants storm the castle, hooting and chanting and calling you a heretic.”
― Vic S. Sussman

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
― Howard Thurman

“The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.”
― Saul Steinberg