T.C. Boyle Quotes

The cocktail party has a simple function in modern society. Its basic purpose is to pay off social debts.

I used to envy kids who had an old-fashioned Grandpa. Not any more. I've got a new ambition. Now I just want to become a modern-type Grandpa myself-and really start living.

... every man on the planet Has just as much right as yourself to the road.

Our life a harp is, with unnumbered strings, And tones and symphonies; but our poor skill Some shallow notes from its great music brings.

Take gifts with a sigh: most men give to be paid.

I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any other land.

The right word fitly spoken is a precious rarity.

They who see the Flying Dutchman never, never reach the shore.

A dreamer lives forever, And a toiler dies in a day.

Springtime is a season we tend to forget as we grow older, and yet far back in our memories, like the landscape of a country visited long ago, it's always there.

Your body is a jewel box.....the jewel is your soul

I happen to like household chores and resent them only when performing them makes it difficult for me to fulfill my professional duties.

whatever devotion to something else there was in him had been made impure by church taken as a weekly, dutiful thing.

I'm not afraid to look like a fool - and I think when you're not afraid, you never do.

I'm the kind of woman who, when she walks into a party, all the other women leave the room.

I've had Irish skin from the time I was a young girl.

Have I seen The Commitments? I was obsessed with that movie. I just watched it again about two weeks ago.

You can get through your whole day only around people who will tell you that you're wonderful. But pretty soon they're going to have to be lying about that.

I am very fortunate to have a career. I always have to act. I don't know if I'll have a career to support it for the rest of my life, but I know I'll always act.

Everybody wants to solve everybody's problems.

I had such a great mom and I know that I'd never be that mom. I wouldn't want to bring a child into this world unless I could be.

But I know somebody who has a bedside urinal. How do I compete with that?

I love talking about myself.

I had never watched a law show prior to being cast on The Practice.

I am a very selfish person.

I could never be a sports writer, unless my assignment was to write 'sports sports sports sports sports' for three pages.

If someone asks me where I bought something I’m wearing, I will usually say I don’t remember.

Something was comforting about strangers—it seemed like they would exist forever as the same, unknowable mass.

I can't believe food costs money.

If you make it into an Olympic team, you're good; if you make it into an Olympic final, you're great; and if you win an Olympic medal you're a freak.

He that condescended so far, and stooped so low, to invite and bring us to heaven, will not refuse us a gracious reception there.

Friendship above all ties does bind the heart; And faith in friendship is the noblest part.

Poets are sultans, if they had their will; For every author would his brother kill.

Faith in friendship is the noblest part.

Let not one look of Fortune cast you down; she were not Fortune if she did not frown.

A man's real and deep feelings are surely those which he acts upon when challenged, not those which, mellow-eyed and soft-voiced, he spouts in easy times.

... in 1950 a very large slice of the white South stood at the crossroads in its attitude toward its colored citizens and [was] psychologically capable of turning either way.

If we love-and-serve an ideal we reach backward in time to its inception and forward to its consummation. To grow is sometimes to hurt; but who would return to smallness?

When we lose love, we lose also our identification with the universe and with eternal values--an identification which alone makesit possible for us to lay our lives on the altar for what we believe.

A mechanism of some kind stands between us and almost every act of our lives.

I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn't love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I felt without roots, like a man without a country.

I really have branched out into areas where I'm totally uncertain, which is very exciting for me. I kind of like not knowing what I'm doing.

My love of singing is hereditary.

One of the problems I have with many writers is their stories are all somewhat similar. They might be very good, but they're always on the same turf. I don't have those limitations.

All writers are egomaniacal, manic-depressive, drug-addicted alcoholics. You want to have that fix again.

They [my stories] evolve. If they're tightly constructed, it's because they're revised constantly as I move forward each day. That's where the structure inheres. It's all organic.

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.

I've been in perfect health and perfectly happy all my life. I don't take any pills; I just get up, clean up after my wife, and start typing every day.

There's a kind of mystery to our being and from my point of view, regarding my own parents and their parents, I'd as soon let it lie than find out who my mother's father was.

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.