T. C. Boyle Quotes
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My job is to engage, entertain, work out my life, tell a certain truth.
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I describe myself as an environmentalist not because I'm marching in the street with placards but because I like to be in the woods by myself.
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I tell jokes, and I have fun, but I tend to worry about everybody and everything throughout the entire world.
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Writing is a channeling of an individual experience; so is reading. That's what's so exciting about this art form - it's interactive.
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What is your identity, and how do you know who you are if you don't have language?
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His hips felt as if an army of mad acupuncturists had been driving hot needles into them.
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The novel is a seduction; a reader has to be seduced.
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Nothing moves around, it just goes straight from the start to the end. The final draft on the final day, that's it, same for the novels. What I turn in is what you see. There are some exceptions, but almost always I can see exactly what it's going to be.
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Life is tragic and absurd, and none of it has any purpose at all.
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I've always written about heroes and wondered who they are.
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Every story is organic, and every story finds its own ending.
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I never go anywhere without a book for fear of being stuck in line in front of the theater or strapped down in the dentist's chair and being bored witless. Thus, I read everywhere.
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I'm enslaved to writing to the point where I sacrifice almost everything else.
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It's true that none of my characters are admirable. But maybe I'm primarily a satirist, and a satirist needs to hold up what's not admirable.
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I can't fathom writers married to writers and musicians married to musicians. There's your enemy in bed beside you.
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When you're in the midst of writing, it's a beautiful thing happening through you. Many people have said that it's not you, it's the soul of humankind and so on, I don't know. But it has the same effect [as music]. It takes you out of your body and out of this planet.
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I have many enemies and they all think I'm being highfalutin calling it performance, but the word "reading" has a connotation of something academic with the lights on and you're going to get a lecture. I'm looking to blow my audiences away by giving a fine, dramatic performance and reminding them of why they love stories.
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You want, as an artist, to be pushing yourself to do what you haven't done before.
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I think, if I'm doing my job correctly, I'm presenting a scenario for you as the reader to engage with on your own. I mean, that's what the best art is supposed to do. It's not supposed to be political. I think if you read all my books, you know where I stand, pretty much.
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Of course all novelists are egomaniacs and want to draw everyone to their fold just like any other preacher. The snake-oil peddler, the false prophet, all of this is fascinating to me. But I certainly hope that I'm more humane than that.
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They [my stories] evolve. If they're tightly constructed, it's because they're revised constantly as I move forward each day. That's where the structure inheres. It's all organic.
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Work saved me. Literature saved me. It sounds corny but it's absolutely true. I was going in the wrong direction, but after the 9,000th night at the bar doing dope with a bunch of Dead Heads, I began to think there was something more.
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In previous generations, there was purpose; you had to die, but there was God, and literature and culture would go on. Now, there is no God, and our species is imminently doomed, so there is no purpose. We get up, raise families, have bank accounts, fix our teeth and everything else. But really, there is utterly no purpose except to be alive.
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I hope to stay light on my feet, to work in many modes, to seek inspiration always, and avoid the fatal. But, as we all know, it is the price of life to burn out, both metaphorically and literally.