"To me, it was obvious man created God in his own image. Man hasn’t the imagination to come up with a God totally unlike him, which is why in Renaissance paintings God looks like a skinny version of Santa Claus."
- Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

"I saw all the dawns come up too early and all the middays reminding you you'd better get a hurry on and all the dusks whisper 'I don't think you're going to make it' and all the shrugging midnights say 'Better luck tomorrow.' I saw all the hands that ever waved to a stranger thinking it was a friend. I saw all the eyes that ever winked to let someone know their insult was only a joke. I saw all the men wipe down toilet seats before urinating but never after. I saw all the lonely men stare at department store mannequins and think 'I'm attracted to a mannequin. This is getting sad.' I saw all the love triangles and a few love rectangles and one crazy love hexagon in the back room of a sweaty Parisian cafe. I saw all the condoms put on the wrong way. I saw all the ambulance drivers on their off hours caught in traffic wishing there was a dying man in the backseat. I saw all the charity-givers wink at heaven. I saw all the Buddhists bitten by spiders they wouldn't kill. I saw all the flies bang uselessly into the screen doors and all the fleas laughing as they rode in on pets. I saw all the broken dishes in all the Greek restaurants and all the Greeks thinking 'Culture's one thing, but this is getting expensive.' I saw all the lonely people scared by their own cats. I saw all the prams, and anyone who says all babies are cute didn't see the babies I saw. I saw all the funerals and all the acquaintances of the dead enjoying their afternoon off work. I saw all the astrology columns predicting that one twelfth of the population of earth will be visited by a relative who wants to borrow money. I saw all the signs forbidding entrance and exit but none forbidding arson or murder. I saw all the carpets with cigarette burns and all the kneecaps with carpet burns. I saw all the worms dissected by curious children and eminent scientists. I saw all the polar bears and the koala bears used to describe fat people you just want to cuddle. I saw all the ugly men hitting on all the happy women who made the mistake of smiling at them. I saw inside all the mouths and it's really disgusting in there. I saw all the bird's eye views of all the birds who think humanity looks pretty active for a bunch of toilet heads..."
- Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

"If you're Australian, you will at least have heard of Terry Dean. If you aren't, you won't have, because while Australia is an eventful place, what goes on there is about as topical in world newspapers as 'Bee Dies In New Guinea After Stinging Tree By Mistake.' It's not our fault. We're too far away. That's what a famous Australian historian once called 'the tyranny of distance.' What he meant was, Australia is like a lonely old woman dead in her apartment; if every living soul in the land suddenly had a massive coronary at the exact same time and the Simpson Desert died of thirst and the rainforests drowned and the barrier reef bled to death, days might pass and only the smell drifting across the ocean to our Pacific neighbors would compel someone to call the police. Otherwise we'd have to wait until the Northern Hemisphere commented on the uncollected mail."
- Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

"Most of my life I never worked out whether to pity, ignore, adore, judge, or murder my father. His mystifying behavior left me wavering right up until the end. He had conflicting ideas about anything and everything, especially my schooling: eight months into kindergarten he decided he didn't want me there anymore because the education system was 'stultifying, soul-destroying, archaic, and mundane.' I don't know how anyone could call finger painting archaic and mundane. Messy, yes. Soul-destroying, no."
- Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

"Late in the evening, long after the fight, long after Sinatra gave a fight eulogy for [Ali] in the showroom and all the people applauded, I walked into the men's room on the first floor at Caesars... and there was an old Afro-American gentlemen handling the towels and everything else.

And I said to the guy , 'You mind if I ask you a question? Did you bet on this fight?'

He said, 'Yes I did.'

'You mind telling me who you bet on?'

And he looked at me and he said, 'I bet on Muhammad Ali.'

'You mind telling me why?'

He said, 'Why? Because he gave me my dignity.'"
- Jerry Izenberg, Muhammad & Larry (2009)

"Maybe in the old days someone would've mumbled about Shaw's lack of loyalty, but these were the new days, and everyone understood that an athlete did what he could to maximize his earning power. Ten years earlier, after all, a rookie named Kevin McHale had threatened to play in Italy because he didn't like the Celtics' contract offer. And Bird had boycotted media day two years earlier because he was unhappy with his contract.

'Why should I be mad at Brian?' McHale said when asked why there was no animosity directed at Shaw. 'Look, if he made it personal, if he came out and said, 'I'm not playing because I hate Kevin McHale,' then it would be different.'

'Actually, Kevin,' a reporter told him, 'that's exactly what he did say.'

'Where is that cocksucker?' said McHale, bolting out of his seat."
- Jack McCallum, Unfinished Business