Toilet Quotes

“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

“You look at everything wrong, and so long as you do so, this life will forever remain a tragedy to you, and the best things that lie in front of you will be forgotten for something that matters but little, simply because that matters little which one cannot have, and what is the point in wanting that which we cannot have if it takes away from the things in which we can have.

“And what can we have?” I asked.

Life, and the greatness that comes from living it. You are unique toilet, it is possible that in all of history, and all of the future there will never be one such as yourself. You are an individual, and being an individual you are as a star that shines but once, so shine brightly.”
― Michael Szymczyk, Toilet: The Novel

“If one cannot love that, then what can one love?

Life? But life is just as ugly as we are.”
― Michael Szymczyk, Toilet: The Novel

“T. walked for almost two days, down a country road, past vast verdant fields with rolling hills, littered everywhere with yellow dandelions and stray cats that watched her walk by. She stopped at a small farmhouse
and the man inside greeted her and welcomed her inside; he made a remark about how she smelled, but then, continued
with his friendly countenance. He offered her bread and milk, and then a cot for the night. T. spent the night at the little farm house, the old farmer sleeping across from her in
the one room house. He snored softly and T. reflected that this gentle old man had a heart made of gold and smiled as she thought of his kindness. The next morning the old farmer offered her bread and milk for her journey, and then gave her a small necklace sprinkled with fragrances, and told her that she would need it, as most people in this world were not good.”
― Michael Szymczyk, Toilet: The Novel

“It was the first time I realized that I was going to die. I was drowning in the realization that this life was not going to last, that life was one day going to end, and as I began to suffocate in the fear of my own mortality, something happened, the days began to pass. I slowly began to forget in the constant flight of life the one thing that could set me free.

My mind turned then to the first time I was in love.

But was I really in love?

For five whole years I had forgotten myself, my existence in the embrace of another. Love, the river Styx, and a toll we pay so we don’t wander wretchedly this earth in a lonely eternity, watching with remorse the fleeting happiness of others in union.

Love, Narcissus, a stream where we fall in love not with another, but in the fact that
the other loves us. Perhaps. Love, Fleeting fulfillment of which at the end lies Ceres, heads of a dog that will devour
us and leave us stranded in the abyss with a thirst never quenched, but our throats always crying out, dry, for more and more and more. Ich liede Durst. So said Siddhartha.
Immer. Toujours. Always

And forever, ad infinitum.

O Life thou pluckest me out.

I guess it doesn’t matter though because, perhaps, that’s just life, and what is true is that for one eternal moment I was in joy…I was the blinking eye

wide open which ever widened for more.”
― Michael Szymczyk, Toilet: The Novel

“I thought of the opera ‘Madama Butterfly’ that I had just been listening to and saw myself as that sailor in that opera who was born into beauty but left it to chase his
American dream. I had forgotten my heart, and the home in which it beat, and now as I held a life, tightly in my arms, in my eyes, that had wounded itself and was now about to
die.

Neglect. The burning furnace.

I realized that I was never to see her, Life, again and that throughout the years when she had been there

I hath forsaken thee

lost in money, in opinion

in short, an exchange

in which we trade the means for the end (happiness),
but never realize until the end how much we have truly lost
and I.

I was at the end of my road, or at least this road.

Regret. But now was not the time.

She was still here; breathing with the wind, beating against my face that licked with the cool, cool presence.

There was still what was, what is, and for but a short time what was still to be.

I had but a few moments to make up for an entire life that I had lost.”
― Michael Szymczyk, Toilet: The Novel

“I spent most the day sleeping…or night…I
feel a little better. I know that there should be no more walks outside. But really…

I destroyed the tomb of shit. I dug the rat out and held its putrid body close to mine, and I cried, and as I cried I held tighter and tighter till the rat and me were one.
And as I cried I whispered, ‘Don’t leave me Mommy! Don’t leave! Hold me please!’ And I almost thought I could hear her whispering back, from somewhere deep within my head.
And as we held each other I forgot about all this crap I was buried in…I too was like this rat, we were both dead only I still awaited to be rescued from my grave of shit. But in this
moment I was rescued by some long lost memory…

A child’s joys. A child’s fears.

Do we ever grow out of them?”
― Michael Szymczyk, Toilet: The Novel

“All those times back in my life when I had thought myself unhappy…how foolish I had been. Any man who experiences the worst looks back on all that was as better.
So it was with me.

“Call only that man happy who is dead.” The ancient Greeks once said that…but oh ye ones lost in the river of time…if only you knew, if only you knew.

Man, no matter what his situation, can be happy, if only he realizes that his situation could be worse.

But for me, there was no worse situation; I was like Croesus attached to the pyre, only there was no King to release me from being consumed by the flames.

But here, right now, as I write this, I am happy, because I am at war. War is the refuge for those who have nothing better to do.

The voice of my conscience, like an ancient Emathion head, was lost in the lust, devoured within the burning fire of my heart.

I poured some Beefaronis over my foot. The dim light of the flashlight shone upon it. Then I waited. One came, quickly, running across the room. It leaped at my foot but my hand grabbed it before its teeth could clench
down on my foot. The razorblade in my other hand came down hard upon its flesh. As I concentrated on murdering this poor rodent, I did not see the other rat scurrying across
the room.

The pain was deep. It did not just indulge in
Beefaronis, but its teeth dug deeper. I screamed.

I let the other rat go, throwing it across the room.
I did not know if it was dead or not, but I did not care. I tried grabbing the other rat, but it had dug itself in. I kept screaming. I felt as if a pitchfork was repeatedly struck through my body while I hung chained to a wall.

In a way, it almost felt good, because it was different from the deadening dullness that was normal.”
― Michael Szymczyk, Toilet: The Novel