Quotes & Sayings About Toronto

Toronto was a great place to work, a fun place to work. People were so hockey-oriented, hockey-minded, without being too critical. In Montreal, they got downright nasty sometimes. — Pat Burns

Toronto's likable, but it could be a lot more, as I think Montreal is, lovable. What we need more than anything, I think, is a great pedestrian promenade. Pick a busy streetscape, close it to cars forever, and it will fill with people enjoying nothing more than the pleasure of their own company. — Andy Barrie

You know what, I'd done an interview show when I was like 16 or 17. One of my first jobs. I did interviews for this television show in Toronto. — Keanu Reeves

She promised new, tantalizing diversions. She whispered words of raw, intense pleasure the likes of which he'd never experienced. He was intrigued. She had the power to drag his mind into his body and keep it there, unable to think or worry. And that was how he found himself in the basement of her town house in Toronto, naked, restrained, and on his knees. She confused his senses by both pleasing and punishing him. With every strike, all his emotional pain seemed to bleed away. His single errant thought was why had he waited so long to use physical pain to alleviate his mental suffering. But even that thought was soon forgotten. — Sylvain Reynard

In the mid-'60s, I quit school and wandered across the country, hitchhiked back and forth a few times, and ended up in hippie times, in the street in Toronto, in Yorkville. — Michael Hogan

Music is the only passion I shamelessly indulge in. However, for recreation I enjoy watching movies. 'Wizard of Oz' was the first film I ever saw, followed by the 'Bond' movies. I also watch a lot of World cinema through DVDs mostly brought by one of my best friends who's now based in Toronto. — A.R. Rahman

I love Toronto. I love it. I love Toronto. I love Canada. I can't wait to get back. Can't wait to have some Timbits. — Aisha Tyler

Toronto I've worked in so many times so you kind of just know every store, every hotel, every - it's really close to New York so it's awesome for my children so if I have to go home for two days it doesn't take very much time. Except for Air Canada. Air Canada is the worst part. — Mary-Louise Parker

The most adorable thing about Toronto is that she remains fiercely aloof and indifferent to the fads and entrepreneurial fevers of her lovers. She is intractably herself, admissive to the most vagrant, sober in a way that gets misinterpreted as stodginess. Her generosity extends to the meek as well as the gold diggers. Mercifully, she doesn't give a hoot about our portraits of her, but just waits, patiently, for our affection and citizenship. — Pier Giorgio Di Cicco

For some reason at Sundance, more than other festivals that I'm aware of, you find filmmakers rushing to screen works that sometimes aren't completed. In my seven years of programming at Toronto, I'm not aware of any documentaries that went back for serious editing after their premiere - other than those presented as works-in-progress. But at Sundance every year there seems to be a few films that push the deadline so hard that they get taken back to the edit room afterwards. — Thom Powers

And Toronto's own Sergio Trujillo has redone his choreography totally, showing all the comical invention that we know he's capable of. — Richard Ouzounian

I'll be vilified if I shoot a film in Toronto for New York. And rightfully so! — Spike Lee

There's something about Brooklyn that reminds me of Toronto. I think because it's so community-minded. — Sandrine Holt

I grew up in the suburbs of Toronto, where everything was in a strip mall. — Dave Foley

Amy Martin (ladysky) and Daniel Baciagalupo had a month to spend on Charlotte Turner's island in Georgian Bay; it was their wilderness way of getting to know each other before their life together in Toronto began. We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly
as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth
the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.
Little Joe was gone, but not a day passed in Daniel Baciagalupo's life when Joe wasn't loved or remembered. The cook had been murdered in his bed, but Dominic Baciagalupo had had the last laugh on the cowboy. Ketchum's left hand would lvie forever in Twisted River, and Six-Pack had known what to do with the rest of her old friend — John Irving

It's tricky to be such an independent person, from Canada. It doesn't matter how incredible your work is, if you're an unknown person and you're from Toronto, people's eyes glaze over immediately as soon as you introduce yourself. — Shary Boyle

60 advocates of unorthodox therapies whose credentials are given in the ACS book (above).( Of these 60, thirty-nine or almost two-thirds, hold ... medical degrees from such universities as Harvard, Illinois, Northwestern, Yale, Dublin, Oxford, or Toronto. Two are osteopaths. 3 ... also hold ... (PhD's) ... scientific ... reputable ... 8 others received PhD's in such fields as chemistry, physiology, bacteriology, parasitology, or medical physics, from ... Yale, Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley, Columbia, and NYU. Thus over 75% ... are medical doctors or doctors of philosophy in scientific areas. — Ralph W. Moss

I teach students that what people say about failure in politics is mostly wrong. People always told me, 'They'll praise you on your way up and kick you on your way down.' That wasn't my experience. I can't walk down the street in Toronto without someone coming up and saying hello. — Michael Ignatieff

I trained in Toronto with a private acting teacher, who was wonderful, for years growing up. — Megan Park

On his refusal to deal with Keith Primeau: We refuse to pay a prima donna, a petulant, pouting player who had 30 goals last year the same money as Toronto is paying Mats Sundin or Pittsburgh is paying Jaromir Jagr. — Peter Karmanos Jr.

The sports page told me that the New Jersey Niggers had beaten the Boston Micks. Some player on the Houston Hebes had accused the San Antonio Spics of dropping their last game to get a higher draft pick. The league was expanding to Toronto, and since they had already honored African Americans, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, and Hispanic Americans, they wanted to name a team to honor Native Americans. They — MariJo Moore

Country artists, I met a lot of them when I was five, six years old. I had an uncle who was a country and western singer and I met Lefty Frizzell when I was five or six years old in those shows that would come through Toronto from Nashville. — Rick Danko

It must be good to die in Toronto. The transition between life and death would be continuous, painless and scarcely noticeable in this silent town. I dreaded the Sundays and prayed to God that if he chose for me to die in Toronto, he would let it be on a Saturday afternoon to save me from one more Toronto Sunday. — Leopold Infeld

I think the situation in Toronto is such that there are funding organizations which make it easy for a film to raise more money than it needs and very often that works against a film. — Atom Egoyan

What's really important for us is that our home base is in L.A., and when we move to Toronto - where 'Suits' is filmed - we move as a unit and are always together in the same place. My 5-year-old goes to two schools, which I was worried about, but it ended up being an amazing, self-esteem-building experience for her. She celebrates it. — Sarah Rafferty

Downtown Toronto is a very good place to talk about the neutrality of modernist architecture. I'm sure this kind of box-building was interesting in the Twenties, Thirties and Forties, but I think it's absolutely ridiculous to build like this in 2013. — Stefan Sagmeister

Toronto Film Festival is one of those festivals where there are 400 movies, and unless you have a distributor who is super confident and puts a lot of money into it, sometimes movies can go unwatched or unnoticed. — Viggo Mortensen

Look, you know i don't wanna come on ungrateful, but that warren report, you know as well as me, just didn't make it. You know, like they might as well have asked some banana salesman from des moines, who was up in toronto on the big day, if he saw anyone around looking suspicious/ ... — Bob Dylan

I had dropped out of theater school after six months and was just staying on my mom's couch at home in Toronto. — Scott Speedman

A peregrine falcon," a passenger said, "lives at 2180 Yonge Street in Toronto, on the corner of Yonge and Eglinton. It sits high on the Canadian Tire building, hunts from there, brings prey, and in full view of everyone in the offices, tears it to pieces. Blood everywhere. — Kathleen Winter

I don't think I was anything short of ecstatic when I found out 'It's Kind of a Funny Story' would be premiering in Toronto. — Keir Gilchrist

Not only did I get to play with these great international musicians, but I also had the opportunity to jam with the local celebrities in Toronto, people like the Walsh Brothers, David Wilcox, Kim Mitchell and the like. It was a great learning experience. — Jeff Healey

Me and Mr. Brainwash in Toronto signing his mural at Hard Candy Fitness Opening! #artforfreedom — Madonna Ciccone

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 Mullen

I trained for four years in Toronto, and even before that, I was back and forth between Canada and the States during summer for training. And, since there isn't much difference between Canada and the States, I haven't felt much difference in the environment. — Kim Yuna

Expanding the Toronto Island Airport will undermine the downtown's economy and liveability and intensify pollution and smog from Oshawa to Oakville. I urge Torontonians to close down this dangerous Trojan horse and get on with planning constructive and delightful ways of using our magnificent lakeside assets. — Jane Jacobs

For more than a century-and-a-half, Europeans had been killing North American Indians with firewater ... Now, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, Canada's pioneer settlers were killing themselves with their own medicine. About Canada. Toronto: Civil Sector Press, November, 2012. Alcohol, North American Indians, Settlers, Canada — Earle Gray

Toronto is a special city, and the environment is perfect for the arts; free and alive. I'm a New Yorker, and Toronto reminds me of a much cleaner New York, so it's like coming home after your mom just cleaned your room for you; for me that's a lovely environment. — Emory Cohen

I'm an east coaster, you know, I'm brought up in Toronto where it's very much, like, kind of a miniature New York in that there's a subway and you're surrounded by people a lot and, you know, you bump into people and you have interactions and you communicate and la la la. — Paulo Costanzo

She barely notices when I say that I am going on to Toronto to visit my grandparents. Except to remark that they must be really old. Not a word about Alister. Not even a bad word. She would not have forgotten. Just tidied up the scene and put it away in a closet with her former selves. Or maybe she really is a person who can deal recklessly with humiliation. — Alice Munro

I have been dealing with back problems since 1995 when I was with the Blackhawks, and I've only missed part of one season because of it. That was last season in Toronto. — Ed Belfour

I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine. — Rob Ford

Well, Toronto, I consider to be the birthplace of my films. I've made three films and this is the third one to premiere here in the same theater on the same day at the same time - they are my audience. They're the people that I think about while I'm writing, directing, and editing. I specifically make movies for them. — Jason Reitman

Charlotte is a very interesting place - I'm Canadian, but I've lived in Toronto, Vancouver, and I've been living here in L.A. for years. — Diego Klattenhoff

I grew up a happy kid in Toronto. I've never suffered. I've never even had a real job! But I understand sadness and striving, and those two things tie into all the roles that I've played. — Alison Pill

Flipping through the 'Toronto Star' one day in 2008, I noticed a piece about a phenomenal boxer from the Philippines who had won several different titles in several different weight divisions. Manny Pacquiao's rise from heart-crushing poverty to the top ranks of his sport was astounding. — Dan Hill

When I think of myself, I think of Toronto. My music would never sound the way it does if it weren't for Toronto. — Drake

The biggest problem with the independent film sector in Toronto is that they find themselves having to make that budget show on screen. — Atom Egoyan

Prince decided to move from Minneapolis to Toronto. Jimmy Jam told me that they were living there now. — Rick Dees

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. — Andre Alexis

He is talking to people in Toronto, trying to find out if I am guilty; but he won't find it out that way. He doesn't understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that other have done for you. — Margaret Atwood

His work "The Pasture" features cast bronze cows in Toronto's financial district I wanted to remind stockbrokers what real stock is. — Joe Fafard

If people ask me, 'What do you think could improve in Toronto dining,' I'd say there's nothing to improve on. — David Chang

Have you ever heard the expression 'one hot mess?' I think the term was custom-made for the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford. — Henry Rollins

When I was 16, I used to drive huge loads of laundry in a three ton truck. I would turn round at night to drive back and see the band in a place north of Toronto called Dunn's Pavilion. I would drive that truck all day and they drive back and all the way until one day I wrecked the truck. I fell asleep and wrecked it. I was OK and so was my helper. I called my dad and the first words out of his mouth were, "are you OK?" I was really lucky I had a kind father. — Gordon Lightfoot

I enjoy being in Toronto - there's lots of energy, lots of neat different neighbourhoods - but Vancouver is still home and always will be. I miss going for walks on the ocean with beautiful mountains. — Laura Mennell

I respect the media. But periodically things come up. Like the guy in Toronto [CP24 Interview]. This is what I run into, also. Everybody that helps you is not necessarily your friend. And everybody that fights you is not necessarily your enemy. So you always have to be on guard. — Mike Tyson

There is no doubt in my mind and I know in my time, there will be a Canadian basketball player playing for Toronto Raptors, 100% — Masai Ujiri

I used to go to Maple Leafs games all the time when Nic shot To Die For here in Toronto. This is a great city. I love it here. — Tom Cruise

And when things are not going well in Toronto, you're going to hear about it. And you're going to say things are not good at all, where it's really not that bad. — Mats Sundin

Republican Scott Brown lost his bid for Senate in New Hampshire last night, two years after he was voted out as Senator in Massachusetts. When asked what he was planning to do next, he said, 'Are they still looking for a mayor in Toronto?' — Jimmy Fallon

The best part was the food. There are some great Italian restaurants we go to whenever we are in Toronto, so the eating was a definite highlight. — Mary-Kate Olsen

I'm a huge fan of Canadian rock-and-roll. When I was growing up, Rush came out with a record called Hemispheres, and I must have listened to that record for two years straight. Even when I was asleep I had it on. So, yeah, whenever I hear a Rush tune, the first thing I think of is Toronto. — Kiefer Sutherland

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 Mullen

I remember attending Toronto Comicon shortly after the release of Captain Marvel and seeing a five-year-old girl who'd come in a handmade Captain Marvel outfit with her hair moussed up - and I totally got the need for this book, for this hero. Someone who looks like her, and acts like her. So, in a way, Captain Marvel helped pave the road to the expanded role of female leads. — Axel Alonso

We're half an hour from Toronto, which offers everything you could want from a city, and a couple of hours from beautiful vacation country. We have it all here, plus George W. Bush is not our president. — Linwood Barclay

I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto. — Margaret Atwood

If life gives you lemons, then make lemonade. — Toronto Star

If you're big in Montreal, you're big in Quebec. If you're big in Toronto, you're big in Canada. But if you're big in New York, you're big in the rest of the world. — Shane Smith

I got back from Toronto, where they had a severe outbreak of SARS- you know, Severe Asian Racism Syndrome. — Margaret Cho

Clearly, if Confederation is to survive another 100 years, Canada must find a national esprit de corps. Cohesion cannot depend indefinitely on hating Toronto. — Eric Nicol

I think "Avatar" is kind of a unique category where people are enjoying the unique theatrical experience even though they may have seen it on the small screen. They want to have that immersive, transportive experience. "2001: A Space Odyssey" played for three years at the Loews cinema in Toronto. I remember that. It just kept playing. People wanted to return to that experience. That may not be the best example because I think "2001" took 25 years to break even. — James Cameron

I grew up in London, Ontario, and moved to Toronto when I was 22 or 23. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a "global village" instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle's present vulgarity. — Guy Debord

I mean I feel like we've shot all these different movies. Like the first 2 weeks of shooting was all Steve Stills apartment and band rehearsal, you know? And so it was like this tiny little group of people and small set comparatively and it just looked like a Toronto apartment. And then we sort of kept ramping up further and further until now we're here in this giant like craziest set I've ever seen with LCD crazy lights that go ... you know? — Alison Pill

I had a job to do, and I did it all these years to the best of my ability. That's what I'd like to leave behind as I finish my final game in Toronto. — Ernie Harwell

When the Taliban took over in 1996, the news of their crimes hit the Toronto papers. As a feminist and as an anti-war activist, I heard about what was happening to women, and I wanted to do something to support those folks. — Deborah Ellis

Indeed I have always found that the only thing in regard to Toronto which faraway people know for certain is that McGill University is in it. — Stephen Leacock

The giant neon spinning discs are a reminder of the huge role that Sam Sniderman and his store played in the cultural life of Toronto and I believe they should be preserved and remounted in the interests of our city's heritage. — Gordon Lightfoot

When I was 9, I auditioned for an arts school in Toronto with a few of my friends. The sole reason we auditioned was that we found out you got to miss a couple days of school to do the audition. Without actually wanting to go to arts school, I accidentally got in. My parents encouraged me to try it, and I ended falling in love with performing. — Jake Epstein

I have an amazing 1930s dress I picked up in Toronto at Cabaret on Queen West. It's a red knee-length tea dress, and it's absolutely beautiful. It makes me happy every time I put it on. — Lindy Booth

I came from Winnipeg and a small-town background, and I wouldn't say a depressed area, but Winnipeg has never been a rich area like Toronto. — Gerry Schwartz

When I was 18, I was moving to New York to start college at The New School. I had done a year of college in Toronto and wasn't happy there. I didn't have any friends in New York City, but I applied and got in. It was pretty overwhelming, but everyone in New York is so ambitious and creative. — Stacey Farber

Twenty years earlier, in a life [Kirsten] mostly couldn't remember, she had had a small nonspeaking role in a short-lived Toronto production of King Lear. Now she walked in sandals whose soles had been cut from an automobile tire, three knives in her belt. — Emily St. John Mandel

A lot of people don't know this, but Toronto is probably the most multicultural city in North America. — Stephen Amell

I've been delighted by Cannes and Toronto but I keep saying I don't know how good we're going to be received in America because that's where it's most challenging. — William Hurt

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

Had I been in Toronto, I would certainly have been killed in this attack. In the room where I normally sleep, the flames and the smoke and the soot is such that the gases would have killed me. — Ernst Zundel

I lived in London for a long time, and that's a pretty white town. In Toronto, I just ended up in this circle of indie rock kids who happened to be white, too ... Really, it was just when I started getting out there and meeting more people and seeing more fans that I went, 'Oh, actually, I'm not white.' — Bryan Lee O'Malley

Canada is a country of ingredients without a cuisine; we're a country with musicians without an indigenous instrument; Toronto's a city that doesn't even have a dish named after it. — Mike Myers

I was a litigation lawyer, working in downtown Toronto. I was successful, yet I was very unfulfilled. I had the sense that I really wasn't living according to my values, and I didn't have the passion or sense of mission I was looking for. — Robin S. Sharma

The single greatest moment of my life happened in Toronto, Canada! — Randy Orton

I was doing an hour drama on television and a Jackie Chan movie in Toronto, so I was on a plane every three days. — Debi Mazar

Starting on February 1, 2010, and running through until May 30, I will be Toronto Public Library's Writer in Residence, working out of the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculation at the Lillian H. Smith branch at College and Spadina. — Karl Schroeder

The only reason Toronto is no longer the dullest city on earth is that it is no longer full of Anglo-Canadians. It is full of Hong Kong Chinese. And not a few Italians. — Joel Garreau

Coming to another hockey Mecca like Toronto makes you a better coach. I want to have fun again. I want to make it fun for everybody, and it's fun when you win. — Pat Burns

I just moved onto Queen West, after 20 years in Cabbagetown. The whole area around Trinity-Bellwoods is one of the juiciest in Toronto - all kinds of people to watch, dogs to pat, food to eat, galleries to check out. And the walk home from CBC delivers some of the most interesting window-shopping in town. — Andy Barrie

I always view my music like a city at night, like Atlanta. I view my music in lights. So Far Gone would be my experiences in Toronto at night. — Drake

After a few months, I decided to do one more leg of the Le Noise tour and film the last show with Jonathan Demme in Toronto's Massey Hall/ It turned out to be a great night. Everyone was very happy because we had captured it. During a review of the digital files, we realized that the resolution was not full, it was a stepped down quality, not the best it could be. My own team's excuses were not adequate, because I was not informed of the decision to go to a lesser quality. Lesser quality is so accepted as normal now that even I had used it unknowingly. I went back to Massey Hall and set up a PA system like the one I used at the show, played back the mixes through the PA, and rerecorded the house sound at the highest resolution. I did the best I could with a bad situation. It does sound great now. Thankfully, the PA mix was only one step down from the highest resolution, so when it resonated in the hall and was rerecorded at the highest level, a high resolution hall sound was captured. — Neil Young

If you're going to do a movie about the Village, it's pretty nice to shoot in the village and not be in Toronto. — Robin Williams