Latest T.C. Boyle Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I don't think we need a critic to negotiate with the audience. People say, "Who are you writing for?" I'm writing for myself but my audience is anybody who knows how to read. I think a story should engage anybody who knows how to read. And I hope that my stories do, maybe on a different level for more sophisticated readers than, say, a high school kid, but still a story has got to grab you. That's why we read it.

  T.C. Boyle

  Writing, School, Kids

  Source: therumpus.net

• Criticism can be wonderful, especially in making connections in an interpretive way. But by applying theories randomly, it's an interesting exercise, but I don't think it illuminates the literature.

  T.C. Boyle

  Exercise, Thinking, Interesting

  Source: therumpus.net

• I go around with my books so much and I love to perform on stage, to remind everybody that the lights are off, the phones are off, and for this hour, it's going to be like your mother reading to you. We're going to remember why we love stories. I think that gets lost in over-intellectualizing.

  T.C. Boyle

  Mother, Book, Reading

  Source: therumpus.net

• If you focus on literature through only one small element of it, like the more scientific element of linguistics, then where is the joy that brought us literature in the first place, which is to have a story?

  T.C. Boyle

  Focus, Joy, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

• The reason we love nature is because it's fascinating and we love all the creatures, but if you watch any nature film, there's always a lesson: "the creatures are all dying and life sucks." The same is true of literature.

  T.C. Boyle

  Life Sucks, Dying, Watches

  Source: therumpus.net

• Music is, by far, the best art. Nothing even comes close. It's so immediate and emotional. In writing, maybe ninety percent of it is the unconscious and ten percent is control. In music, I think it's probably more like ninety-nine percent the unconscious. It's just a beautiful thing happening through you. And so, too, is writing a great story.

  T.C. Boyle

  Beautiful, Art, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

• 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.

  T.C. Boyle

  Beautiful, Writing, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• I always listen to music while I'm working and I always read aloud to my wife. I love to read aloud to an audience because there's a cadence and a beat. There's a music to the language that's very important to me.

  T.C. Boyle

  Wife, Important, Cadence

  Source: therumpus.net

• I've always been a huge fan of theatre and performance. The idea of just the human voice and just this night. Live music is the same. They're doing it for you right now. It's an amazing thing. And if you perform a story properly, it can be a transporting, too.

  T.C. Boyle

  Night, Ideas, Voice

  Source: therumpus.net

• Especially students. I love to turn them on to a story. Some of them have to go see me as an assignment, like kids from the schools in New York will go to the Y. I want them to know why I love this and why they should too.

  T.C. Boyle

  New York, School, Kids

  Source: therumpus.net

• 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.

  T.C. Boyle

  Reading, Blow, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

• From my point of view, why shouldn't I work in every possible mode, to see if it's viable? "Los Gigantes" would not have worked as a straightforward, naturalistic tale. Part of the fun of it is that it's so preposterous and yet at the same time, it could have happened. Think of eugenics. Hitler certainly would have been doing it if he could have.

  T.C. Boyle

  Fun, Thinking, Eugenics

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think it's a great thing to hear the author reading. I've listened to CDs of Cheever and Updike reading their stories and Hemingway. To hear what their voices were like is amazing. Whether they're reading well or not, it's great to listen to the intonation and the beat of the guy who wrote the story.

  T.C. Boyle

  Reading, Thinking, Cds

  Source: therumpus.net

• I was joking earlier when I said that all writers are manic depressives, but it's a joke with a lot of truth behind it. For fiction writers and poets, too, there's something wrong with you and you do this art as a way of correcting it or addressing it in some way.

  T.C. Boyle

  Art, Fiction, Way

  Source: therumpus.net

• Work ethic and this determination is all part of escaping the depressive side. Of course I'm manic depressive, maybe not to the degree that Exley was, but I think all writers are. There are highs and lows. Look at David Foster Wallace.

  T.C. Boyle

  Determination, Thinking, Escaping

  Source: therumpus.net

• You're not getting the joy out of literature that it gave you. This is the danger of what we do. Look at Hemingway and so many others. You devote your life to one thing, that is what you are. It's artificial but it's all you have. If you lose it, then you're nothing and there's no point in going on.

  T.C. Boyle

  Joy, Looks, Literature

  Source: therumpus.net

• Everything we do is escapism, because we'll all be dead and everything we do is completely meaningless. Why brush your teeth? Why not be in the park with the bums passing a short dog? Why pay taxes, why get educated? Of course literature is an escape. You have to fill the hours.

  T.C. Boyle

  Dog, Teeth, Why Not

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm a product of state schools. I had a working-class family. We had no books. I was the first to go to college. But I didn't really think about it, or about making money. I was just going to be an artist, and I've been fortunate. I've never had to work for anybody nor have I had to write for money. Maybe that's another reason that I've been able to be productive. I haven't had to use my writing to make a living.

  T.C. Boyle

  Book, Writing, School

  Source: therumpus.net

• There's a kind of mystery to our being and from my point of view, regarding my own parents and their parents, I'd as soon let it lie than find out who my mother's father was.

  T.C. Boyle

  Mother, Father, Lying

  Source: therumpus.net

• 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.

  T.C. Boyle

  Night, Dope, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

• Writing is a channeling of an individual experience; so is reading. That's what's so exciting about this art form - it's interactive.

  T.C. Boyle

  Art, Reading, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

• Alcohol had a lot to do with it, too, and mental instability. All writers are narcissistic, manic-depressive drug addicts and alcoholics, and I am no exception.

  T.C. Boyle

  Alcohol, Drug, Narcissistic

  Source: therumpus.net

• I don't know who they are[my characters] . They're entirely invented characters. Maybe that's how I've been able to write so many books, because there are no boundaries for me. I can write a completely fantastical story like "Swept Away" or "Blinded by the Light" and then a non-comic drama like "Chicxulub" or something like "Birnam Wood" that has autobiographical underpinnings. Why not?

  T.C. Boyle

  Drama, Book, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

• One of the problems I have with many writers is their stories are all somewhat similar. They might be very good, but they're always on the same turf. I don't have those limitations.

  T.C. Boyle

  Stories, Might, Problem

  Source: therumpus.net

• I have very rarely written autobiographical stuff. "Greasy Lake" and some other works have some autobiographical elements, as does "Birnam Wood," the one I chose to end [this collection] with. I lived in that house and some of my feelings are expressed in it, but it's not autobiography. It was not me and that didn't happen exactly that way.

  T.C. Boyle

  Lakes, House, Feelings

  Source: therumpus.net