The hardest part is always the middle of anything because at that point, on some unconscious level, you have to figure out what it's about and why you're doing it and what it means. You don't know that in the… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
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… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
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… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
The hardest thing in a novel is time. You've got [a line like] "two weeks later, he woke up with a headache," and you've… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I'm pretty hardcore. I stick exactly to what I'm doing. So I write a novel in one period, and then I'll write stories in… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
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… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
There are always surprises. Life may be inveterately grim and the surprises disproportionately unpleasant, but it would be hardly worth living if there were… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
“Besides, to like something, to really like it and come out and say so, is taking a terrible risk. I mean, what if I'm… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
“I am concerned with social and environmental issues. What rational person is not? But advocacy and art do not mix. Art is a seduction.… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
Pleasure, I remind myself, is inseparable from its lawfully wedded mate, pain. — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
A glad zest and hopefulness might be inspired even in the most jaded and ennui-cursed, were there in our homes such simple, truthful natures… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
What I'm doing is exploring things. This is why I'm a fiction writer rather than an essayist or a politician or whatever. I just… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
“Who was she in high school? Little Miss Nobody. She could have embroidered it on her sweaters, tattooed it across her forehead. And in… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image