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Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

T. C. Boyle Quotes

Sometimes, we find common ground; more often, we don’t.

– 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

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.

– T. C. Boyle

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.

– T. C. Boyle

You want, as an artist, to be pushing yourself to do what you haven’t done before.

– T. C. Boyle

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

I love performing in front of an audience. I like the questions; I like controversy.

– T. C. Boyle

I am a worrier. I worry about the state of our country, of the world, of our species. Every day seems to deliver a new nail to hammer into our collective coffin.

– T. C. Boyle

The compulsively readable events of my life occurred mainly in infancy, and it’s been pretty humdrum ever since.

– T. C. Boyle

If we lose sight of the fact that writing is entertainment, then writing is doomed.

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

– T. C. Boyle

I tell jokes, and I have fun, but I tend to worry about everybody and everything throughout the entire world.

– T. C. Boyle

I really like the power of stopping the laughter and turning it to horror.

– T. C. Boyle

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.

– T. C. Boyle

What is your identity, and how do you know who you are if you don’t have language?

– T. C. Boyle

Science has killed religion. There’s no hope for the future with seven billion of us on the planet, and the only thing you can do is to laugh in the face of it all.

– T. C. Boyle

My job is to engage, entertain, work out my life, tell a certain truth.

– 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

I can’t fathom writers married to writers and musicians married to musicians. There’s your enemy in bed beside you.

– T. C. Boyle

This is the beauty of fiction. We may not like these characters, but we inhabit them.

– T. C. Boyle

I don’t care if the audience is 600 Saul Bellows; I’m going to knock them dead with a comedy routine. I’m out there as a missionary for literature because, if people laugh and enjoy themselves, they might actually do something as bizarre as reading the book.

– T. C. Boyle

I’ve always written about heroes and wondered who they are.

– T. C. Boyle

I can’t read novels while I’m writing a novel, because somebody’s voice creeps in.

– T. C. Boyle

Life is tragic and absurd, and none of it has any purpose at all.

– T. C. Boyle

I read widely – for news, the arts, science, for entertainment, and the value of being informed – and, as a fiction writer, I can’t help transposing what I learn into the scenario for a novel or story.

– T. C. Boyle