T. C. Boyle Quotes

American - Novelist Born: December 2, 1948

It's hard to say how certain stories just punch us in the heart and the brain at the same time at the end. I suppose that's what we're all looking for. But each story has its own valence, its own way of saying goodbye to you.

T. C. Boyle

The novel is a seduction; a reader has to be seduced.

T. C. Boyle

I am mad for nature writing. I want to get inside the head of every creature in the world, even ants.

T. C. Boyle

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.

T. C. Boyle

Now that we all live in a bad '70s sci-fi movie, I am made to understand the tyranny of the machines every minute of every day.

T. C. Boyle

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.

T. C. Boyle

I'm just kind of fascinated by how we can deny that we are animals and what our impact on the other animals is like, and how quixotic we can be in trying to assess what we've done in trying to correct it.

T. C. Boyle

I'm not looking ahead joyfully to the rest of my life or the future of the human race. I've always written about man as an animal species among other animals, competing for limited resources. Our population is exploding. Our environment is dying. Science has debunked God.

T. C. Boyle

Books are up against TV and movies and video games and a multimedia society that is so busy that people don't have contemplative time any more. I worry deeply about this. In fact, I worry about everything all the time. I used to be a punk. All I wanted to do was tear everything down, and that was so much easier.

T. C. Boyle

It's just my natural way - to be funny. I don't know why that is. But as I've said, humor is a quick cover for shock, horror, confusion. The critics hate funny writers for the most part. They think funny is not serious, but I think that funny can be even more serious than nonfunny. And it can be more affecting, too.

T. C. Boyle

I think that's what art is about: to provoke you. It helps me make sense of a senseless universe because I become the god of the story. I create it, and I see it in all its lineaments in my own way and can control it - in a world in which everything else is out of control.

T. C. Boyle

I think the best endings bring you back in rather than close things off with absolute finality. I'm not saying they necessarily have to be ambiguous, but we don't always need to know what happens when everyone wakes up tomorrow morning.

T. C. Boyle