Quotes from T. C. Boyle

I'm enslaved to writing to the point where I sacrifice almost everything else.

The novel is a seduction; a reader has to be seduced.

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.

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.

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

I worry about everything in the world, and it's just too much for anybody to think about, so I have my art as my consolation.

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

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

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

I think, if I'm doing my job correctly, I'm presenting a scenario for you as the reader to engage with on your own. I mean, that's what the best art is supposed to do. It's not supposed to be political. I think if you read all my books, you know where I stand, pretty much.

Look at Sam Beckett. Most depressed man who ever lived, but he sure was funny.

Sometimes if something is entertaining and amusing, people tend to think that it doesn't have the depth of something that's dramatic. I don't think that's true.

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.

One of the reasons I've been able to be productive is that I want to do everything.

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.

I've never really been met with indifference, where they say, 'Who cares?' I think that's what good art is supposed to do. It's not supposed to make you feel good about your own prejudices and your own values; it's supposed to open you up in some way and get you outraged or make you happy or make you sad or whatever it's going to do.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I never go anywhere without a book for fear of being stuck in line in front of the theater or strapped down in the dentist's chair and being bored witless. Thus, I read everywhere.