Top T.C. Boyle Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

T.C. Boyle Biography

Thomas Coraghessan Boyle, also known as T. C. Boyle and T. Coraghessan Boyle (born December 2, 1948), is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published fourteen novels and more than 100 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988, for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York.

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T.C. Boyle Quotes

Nothing moves around, it just goes straight from the start to the end. The final draft on the final day, that's it, same for the novels. What I turn in is what you see. There are some exceptions, but almost always I can see exactly what it's going to be.

Ends, Exactly, Exceptions, Finals, Moving, Novels

I think if you read all my books you know where I stand, pretty much. You could probably give the reader a questionnaire and they could figure out what I'm about. But I don't think my job is to tell you that.

Book, Give, Jobs, Pretty, Questionnaire, Thinking

I always dread the process of writing because I'm not a writer. I'm an audible guy, I'm a verbal guy. I love to talk. I write a book every couple years, but it just takes everything out of me to get a book out.

Book, Couple, Dread, Writing

Basically for me a story can be anything. Anything you tell me, anything I read in the newspaper, in any mode. I don't have any restrictions.

Mode, Newspaper, Newspapers, Restriction, Stories, Tell

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.

Reading, Blow, Thinking, Performance, Reminding

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.

Art, Beautiful, Maybe, Story, Think, Writing

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.

Book, Gets, Lights, Mother, Reading, Think

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.

Aloud, Cadence, Important, Language, Listen, Wife

The very genetic determinism I posited in World's End as a way of shaking off my inherited demons is being proven in fact as we map out the human genome.

Determinism, Map, Maps, Posited, Way, World

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 work of Ha Jin in its power and revelation of the new.

Brings, Culture, Look, Looks, Mind, Work

Pleasure, I remind myself, is inseparable from its lawfully wedded mate, pain.

Lawfully, Mates, Pain, Pleasure, Remind

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.

Art, Jobs, Mean, Presenting, Reader, Scenario

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.

Bar, Dead, Dope, Night, Saved, Thinking

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 got to add up that entire two weeks and what the date is and whether it works. That kind of stuff drives me crazy and if I don't have it exactly right, I can't move forward because I don't feel confident.

Confident, Crazy, Forward, Moving, Time, Two

We are animals and we are made in this way and this is how we behave. 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.

Animal, Animals, Fascinated, Impact, Quixotic, Trying

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?

Book, Boundaries, Drama, Entirely, Fantastical, Writing

I can't be reading novels when I'm writing a novel, because somebody's voice creeps in. The hardest thing to do is keep the tone and your attitude over the course of a year or however long it takes. But when I'm writing short stories, which I will be doing shortly, I can read anything I like.

Attitude, Like, Novel, Reading, Thing, Writing

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 it works.

Dictum, Knows, Professorial, Works, Write, Writing

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.

Degree, Determination, Escaping, Manic, Thinking

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.

Connections, Exercise, Interesting, Interpretive, Randomly, Thinking

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