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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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