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But then, that's the beauty of writing stories-each one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, there's no feeling like it.

T.C. Boyle

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T.C. Boyle
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More quotes by T.C. Boyle

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There are always surprises. Life may be inveterately grim and the surprises disproportionately unpleasant, but it would be hardly worth living if there were no exceptions, no sunny days, no acts of random kindness.
T.C. Boyle
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To be a friend of the earth, you have to be an enemy of man.
T.C. Boyle
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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.
T.C. Boyle
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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.
T.C. Boyle
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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.
T.C. Boyle
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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 another period. I only work on one thing at once, because I'm afraid that I wouldn't finish what I'd started.
T.C. Boyle
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The reason we love nature is because it's fascinating and we love all the creatures, but if you watch any nature film, there's always a lesson: the creatures are all dying and life sucks. The same is true of literature.
T.C. Boyle
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The hardest part is always the middle of anything because at that point, on some unconscious level, you have to figure out what it's about and why you're doing it and what it means. You don't know that in the beginning.
T.C. Boyle
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When you're in the midst of writing, it's a beautiful thing happening through you. Many people have said that it's not you, it's the soul of humankind and so on, I don't know. But it has the same effect [as music]. It takes you out of your body and out of this planet.
T.C. Boyle
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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.
T.C. Boyle
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Alcohol had a lot to do with it, too, and mental instability. All writers are narcissistic, manic-depressive drug addicts and alcoholics, and I am no exception.
T.C. Boyle
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I've always been a huge fan of theatre and performance. The idea of just the human voice and just this night. Live music is the same. They're doing it for you right now. It's an amazing thing. And if you perform a story properly, it can be a transporting, too.
T.C. Boyle
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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.
T.C. Boyle
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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.
T.C. Boyle
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I was joking earlier when I said that all writers are manic depressives, but it's a joke with a lot of truth behind it. For fiction writers and poets, too, there's something wrong with you and you do this art as a way of correcting it or addressing it in some way.
T.C. Boyle
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At best, I consider flying an unavoidable necessity, a time to resurrect forgotten prayers and contemplate the end of all joy in a twisted howling heap of machinery at worst, I rank it right up there with psychotic episodes and torture at the hands of malevolent strangers.
T.C. Boyle
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From my point of view, why shouldn't I work in every possible mode, to see if it's viable? Los Gigantes would not have worked as a straightforward, naturalistic tale. Part of the fun of it is that it's so preposterous and yet at the same time, it could have happened. Think of eugenics. Hitler certainly would have been doing it if he could have
T.C. Boyle
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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.
T.C. Boyle
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All writers are egomaniacal, manic-depressive, drug-addicted alcoholics. You want to have that fix again.
T.C. Boyle
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In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding whole chunks of normal life, and, of course, pumping yourself up as much as possible as a way of keeping on. Sort of cheering for yourself in the great football stadium of life. (Barnes & Noble Review, email dialogue with Cameron Martin, Feb. 09, 2009
T.C. Boyle