First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or hear or smell or taste, you… — 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
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
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
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
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
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
“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
“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
Pleasure, I remind myself, is inseparable from its lawfully wedded mate, pain. — T.C. Boyle Copy Share
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
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
“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
The professorial dictum has always been to write what you know, but I say write what you don't know and find something out. And… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share
A richly detailed, poignant, and utterly fascinating look into another culture and how it is cross-pollinated by our own. It brings to mind the… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share
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… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share
