"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."

--

Source : T.C. Boyle (2013). “T.C. Boyle Stories II: The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle”, p.16, Penguin

T.C. Boyle

#Writing Quotes

“Turtles have always been my sigil, I suppose. When I was a kid, growing up in Bayonne, NJ, I lived in a federal housing project, and we were not allowed to have a dog or cats. The only pets I could have were turtles. So, I had an entire toy castle filled with dime-store turtles. I gave them all names, and since they were living in a toy castle, I decided they were all knights and kingsand I made up stories about how they killed each other and betrayed each other and fought for the kingdom. So, Game of Thrones, actually began with turtles. I decided later to recast it with actual human beings.”
“In the Irish Revival of 1859, people became so weak that they could not get back to their homes. Men and women would fall by the wayside and would be found hours later pleading with God to save their souls. They felt that they were slipping into hell and that nothing else in life mattered but to get right with God... To them eternity meant everything. Nothing else was of any consequence. They felt that if God did not have mercy on them and save them, they were doomed for all time to come.”
“Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature, and is purifying only in so far as there is a natural and unschooled goodness in the human heart.”
“It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.”
“I will prove that the world is wrong, by showing what God is...God himself was once as we are now and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret...I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see”
“The thing that I champion is sustainability. My terror is that suddenly we see it as a luxury, not an essential. That's a danger.”
“In a cool solitude of trees Where leaves and birds a music spin, Mind that was weary is at ease, New rhythms in the soul begin.”

Source : William Kean Seymour (1946). “Collected Poems”
“It's all we ever wantedAnd all we'll ever needAnd now it's slipping through our fingersFaster than the speed of night.”

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