T. C. Boyle
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
T. C. Boyle

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

T. C. Boyle
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
T. C. Boyle

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

T. C. Boyle
T. C. Boyle

Art saved me. It may sound corny, but it's true.

T. C. Boyle
T. C. Boyle

The beauty of American law is you cannot slander anybody who is dead. This is not true in all countries.

T. C. Boyle
T. C. Boyle

I do not want to repeat myself. I want to reach for something I've never attained. This is the excitement of art.

T. C. Boyle
T. C. Boyle

As humans, we all want our own island. Of course, the truth is, we're never going to get it.

T. C. Boyle
T. C. Boyle

What higher art does is to invite us in and allow us to make decisions.

T. C. Boyle
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
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
T. C. Boyle

I like to live in my own mind, regardless of everyone and everything, working out the intimate puzzles that are my stories and novels.

T. C. Boyle
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
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
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
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
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
T. C. Boyle

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

T. C. Boyle
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
T. C. Boyle

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