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" 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

Kind

Impact

How

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

" 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. "

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

T. C. Boyle

Characters

Beauty

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

" 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. "

T. C. Boyle

Hold

Admirable

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

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

" 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. "

" I am a worrier. I worry about the state of our country, of the world, of our species. Every day seems to deliver a new nail to hammer into our collective coffin. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Life is tragic and absurd, and none of it has any purpose at all. "

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

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

" I think the way to be a writer is to experience things, certainly, and be open to things, but at some point to become dedicated to the craft of writing and to create a stable environment for that writing to occur in. "

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

" In previous generations, there was purpose; you had to die, but there was God, and literature and culture would go on. Now, there is no God, and our species is imminently doomed, so there is no purpose. We get up, raise families, have bank accounts, fix our teeth and everything else. But really, there is utterly no purpose except to be alive. "

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

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

" 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. "

T. C. Boyle

Hope

" This is why fiction is an art, and life is not - how much more affecting is the lie than the truth. "

" What is your identity, and how do you know who you are if you don't have language? "

" Now that we all live in a bad '70s sci-fi movie, I am made to understand the tyranny of the machines every minute of every day. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 can't fathom writers married to writers and musicians married to musicians. There's your enemy in bed beside you. "

" I envy Jesus because he's dead. "

" I hope to stay light on my feet, to work in many modes, to seek inspiration always, and avoid the fatal. But, as we all know, it is the price of life to burn out, both metaphorically and literally. "