Toronto Quotes

“Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.”
― Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

“It's a sort of piss-take on culture, because a drag queen is a clown - a parody of our society. It's a sarcastic spoof on culture, which allows us to laugh at ourselves - but in a way that is inclusive of everyone.”
― RuPaul

“Toronto's already ass-deep in cockroaches and conservatives; what's one more lower life-form?”
― Tanya Huff, Blood Bank

“It seemed to me that everybody ended up in Toronto at least for a little while.”
― Alice Munro, Dear Life

“...when I was a kid, Toronto streets were deserted and quiet on Sundays, except for the sound of church bells I stood on the sidewalk one December listening to the Christmas bells - I've never forgotten that moment...”
― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

“There were Italian neighbourhood and Vietnamese neighbourhoods in this city; there are Chinese ones and Ukrainian ones and Pakistani ones and Korean ones and African ones. Name a region on the planet and there's someone from there, here. All of them sit on Ojibway land, but hardly any of them know it or care because that genealogy is wilfully untraceable except in the name of the city itself. They'd only have to look, though, but it could be that what they know hurts them already, and what if they found out something even more damaging? These are people who are used to the earth beneath them shifting, and they all want it to stop-and if that means they must pretend to know nothing, well, that's the sacrifice they make.”
― Dionne Brand, What We All Long For

“I'm an old-fashioned guy. I believe in the Enlightenment, and reason, and logic, and you know, facts.”
― Barack Obama

“Some people will tell you that Toronto, in the summer, is the nothing more than a cesspool of pollution, garbage, and the smells of a hundred ethnicities competing for top spot in a race won historically by curry, garlic, and the occasional cauldron of boiled cabbage. Take a walk down College Street West, Gerrard Street East, or the Danforth, and you'll see; then, they add—these people, complaining—that the stench is so pervasive, so incorrigible, nor merely for lack of wind, but for the ninety-nine percent humidity, which, after a rainstorm, adds an eradicable bottom-note of sweaty Birkenstocks and the organic tang of decaying plant life. This much is true; there is, however, more to the story. Take a walk down the same streets and you'll find racks of the most stunning saris—red with navy brocade, silver, canary, vermillion and chocolate; marts with lahsun and adrak, pyaz and pudina; windows of gelato, zeppole, tiramisu; dusty smoke shops with patio-bistros; you'll find dove-white statuary of Olympian goddesses, mobs in blue jerseys, primed for the World Cup—and more, still, the compulsory banter of couples who even after forty years can turn foul words into the bawdiest, more unforgettable laughter (and those are just the details). Beyond them is the container, the big canvas brushed with parks and valleys and the interminable shore; a backdrop of ferries and islands, gulls and clouds—sparkles of a million wave-tips as the sun decides which colours to leave on its journey to new days. No, Toronto, in the summer, is the most paradisiacal place in the world.”
― Cory Ingram, Paradise

“We’re lost in each other, in the heart of Toronto, slow dancing to nothing but the beat of my heart and the sound of her breath on my neck. I know the subway trains are trembling beneath my feet and that we’re amidst the constant buzz of city life, yet I hear nothing but my heart beating and feel nothing but her breath on my neck.”
― Shannon M Mullen, See What Flowers

“Toronto is the greatest and happiest city on earth, but despite that — maybe because of that — it made me unhappy, as I just lived in an apartment there, never seeing anyone. Once I went to watch the Blue Jays play baseball, but being surrounded by so many people who I knew I could never connect with was the thing that made me want to [leave].”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“Public transit situates us so that we are given license to accept what's right in front of us, but will likely arouse our desire to compare our narrative to someone else's, to give ourselves permission to speculate upon a person's private space, or life, with no fear of recourse or punishment.”
― Julie Wilson, Seen Reading

“The city had been built by people from innumerable elsewheres. It was a chaos of cultures ordered only by its long streets. It belonged to no one and never would, or maybe it was a million cities in one, unique to each of its inhabitants, belonging to whoever walked its streets.”
― André Alexis, The Hidden Keys

“If you can get with the freaks, then we want you here.”
― Sarah Liss, Army of Lovers: A Community History of Will Munro

“We are a city of charming little parkettes, she thinks grimly, that nobody ever visits. Named for local heroes that nobody remembers.”
― K. D. Miller, All Saints: Stories

“It’s hopeless, trying to recruit a stranger to help me find someone who’s a stranger to him. But then again, we are all strangers to ourselves, caught up in the monotony of daily life, stuck in our routines, never really stopping to think about what will happen to us if we fall off track.”
― Shannon M Mullen, See What Flowers

“I love it, one person in the world who lives at Toronto, Canada seems to be really interested, in the work, I am able, to give.”
― Petra Hermans

“For instance, why, in 2016, are academics still writing about the misrepresentation in the media of young black men, particularly those associated with crimes? There are numerous studies every year that conclude that young, black males, when they appear in the media, face exaggerated negative associations, limited positive associations, and a distortion of problems as well as missing stories and histories. When we see young, black men in the media, we tend to see their mug shots. the black men don't appear as people, but as images without a history. In deep contrast, serial rapist and murderer Paul Bernardo was depicted in the media at his wedding; Luka Magnotta, the psychopath who dismembered his lover and sent parts of him to various government officials, was frequently shown in photos taken for a fashion magazine. And the kid who shot up a bunch of people gathered at a church, Dylan Roof. He was shown only as some freak of nature neo-Nazi white guy by his mug shot. The white men committing crimes are the freaks. We hear their stories, we hear about their lives. The black men are the stereotype, and we don't hear about their stories.”
― Anita Arvast, What Killed Jane Creba: Rap, Race, and the Invention of a Gang War

“This thing right here is an edgy sex-type thing: all po-mo and throwback, at once passionate and insincere. It creeps around downtown, goes underground in the financial district, resurfaces on Queen West, becomes a full-blown geyser in bars like this. The Cramp are on, and everybody’s All Tore Up, probably snorting coke in the bathroom, shooting bourbon at the bar, and pretty soon it’ll be The Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon, red satin curtains in the window behind the stage, hubcaps on the walls.”
― Paul Carlucci, The Secret Life of Fission

“The best doctor gives the least medicines.”
― Marsha Lax

“a few more mistakes and I'll get it right”
― J Flux

“He [Steve Ross] said he used to have the same prejudices against the game as most Americans: It was too slow, too "foreign," too difficult to understand what was really going on. But once he started watching the game, and had some friends explain it to him, he realized how fascinating soccer could be. He believed that it just needed the right conditions to thrive. In other words, he saw soccer like an entrepreneur, which of course was exactly what he was, and an excellent one at that. He spotted an unmet need, an undervalued asset, and made it his personal mission to make it succeed, come hell or high water. After the Cosmos struggled through its first few seasons, switching stadiums every so often and failing to generate much buzz, Steve purchased the team from its original investors for the grand price of one dollar. And then, for no good reason other than his own passion and drive, Steve decided to throw the entire commercial and marketing weight of Warner Communications behind the team. He would not only make the Cosmos a winner, but bring a "new" spectator sport to the American public.”
― Pelé, Why Soccer Matters: A Look at More Than Sixty Years of International Soccer

“I told em we were no thrill-kill cult and that we were just ordinary dictionary salesmen on a delivery job gone wrong”
― Richard John Parfitt, Stray Dogs