T. C. Boyle Quotes
American - Novelist Born: December 2, 1948

Books are up against TV and movies and video games and a multimedia society that is so busy that people don't have contemplative time any more. I worry deeply about this. In fact, I worry about everything all the time. I used to be a punk. All I wanted to do was tear everything down, and that was so much easier.
T. C. Boyle

Sometimes, we find common ground; more often, we don't.
T. C. Boyle

The novel is a seduction; a reader has to be seduced.
T. C. Boyle

Life is tragic and absurd, and none of it has any purpose at all.
T. C. Boyle

What higher art does is to invite us in and allow us to make decisions.
T. C. Boyle

One of the reasons I've been able to be productive is that I want to do everything.
T. C. Boyle

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.
T. C. Boyle

What is your identity, and how do you know who you are if you don't have language?
T. C. Boyle

It's hard to say how certain stories just punch us in the heart and the brain at the same time at the end. I suppose that's what we're all looking for. But each story has its own valence, its own way of saying goodbye to you.
T. C. Boyle

I am mad for nature writing. I want to get inside the head of every creature in the world, even ants.
T. C. Boyle

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.
T. C. Boyle

As humans, we all want our own island. Of course, the truth is, we're never going to get it.
T. C. Boyle

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.
T. C. Boyle

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.
T. C. Boyle

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.
T. C. Boyle

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

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.
T. C. Boyle

I'm enslaved to writing to the point where I sacrifice almost everything else.
T. C. Boyle

The compulsively readable events of my life occurred mainly in infancy, and it's been pretty humdrum ever since.
T. C. Boyle

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

I've always written about heroes and wondered who they are.
T. C. Boyle

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.
T. C. Boyle

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.
T. C. Boyle

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

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.
T. C. Boyle

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.
T. C. Boyle

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

It's just my natural way - to be funny. I don't know why that is. But as I've said, humor is a quick cover for shock, horror, confusion. The critics hate funny writers for the most part. They think funny is not serious, but I think that funny can be even more serious than nonfunny. And it can be more affecting, too.
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.
T. C. Boyle

The beauty of American law is you cannot slander anybody who is dead. This is not true in all countries.
T. C. Boyle

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.
T. C. Boyle

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

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

I really like the power of stopping the laughter and turning it to horror.
T. C. Boyle

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.
T. C. Boyle

If we lose sight of the fact that writing is entertainment, then writing is doomed.
T. C. Boyle

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

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

I tell jokes, and I have fun, but I tend to worry about everybody and everything throughout the entire world.
T. C. Boyle

I worry about everything in the world, and it's just too much for anybody to think about, so I have my art as my consolation.
T. C. Boyle

I like to live in my own mind, regardless of everyone and everything, working out the intimate puzzles that are my stories and novels.
T. C. Boyle

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

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.
T. C. Boyle

I describe myself as an environmentalist not because I'm marching in the street with placards but because I like to be in the woods by myself.
T. C. Boyle

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

Art saved me. It may sound corny, but it's true.
T. C. Boyle

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.
T. C. Boyle

I envy Jesus because he's dead.
T. C. Boyle

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

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.
T. C. Boyle

Every story is organic, and every story finds its own ending.
T. C. Boyle

Paul Watson Quotes
Canadian - Environmentalist Born: December 2, 1950

Follow your dreams and use your natural-born talents and skills to make this a better world for tomorrow.
Paul Watson

I do what I do because it is the right thing to do. I am a warrior, and it is the way of the warrior to fight superior odds.
Paul Watson

I have been honoured to serve the whales, dolphins, seals - and all the other creatures on this Earth. Their beauty, intelligence, strength, and spirit have inspired me.
Paul Watson

The tragedy is that there is so much more incentive - money - to destroy the ecology than there is to preserve it.
Paul Watson

The shark is the apex predator in the sea. Sharks have molded evolution for 450 million years. All fish species that are prey to the sharks have had their behavior, their speed, their camouflage, their defense mechanisms molded by the shark.
Paul Watson

The only language that the Japanese whaling industry understands is economics.
Paul Watson

If we wipe out the fish, the oceans are going to die. If the oceans die, we die. We can't live on this planet with a dead ocean.
Paul Watson

The most powerful weapon in the world, as far as I'm concerned, is the camera.
Paul Watson

We'll lose more species of plants and animals between 2000 and 2065 than we've lost in the last 65 million years. If we don't find answers to these problems, we're gonna be victims of this extinction event that we're at fault for.
Paul Watson

Social change comes through people.
Paul Watson

We buy a bottle of water in the city, where clean water comes out in its taps. You know, back in 1965, if someone said to the average person, 'You know in thirty years you are going to buy water in plastic bottles and pay more for that water than for gasoline?' Everybody would look at you like you're completely out of your mind.
Paul Watson

Protesting is fundamentally submissive.
Paul Watson

I will not watch a whale die. I've not seen a whale die since I left Greenpeace in 1977.
Paul Watson

Sea Shepherd does not condone, nor do we practise, violence.
Paul Watson

There's money to be made by driving a species extinct.
Paul Watson

I have actually led more expeditions to Antarctica than Scott, Amundsen, and Shackleton put together.
Paul Watson

The Sea Shepherd crew is doing what governments should be doing, but refuse to do themselves, because of the threats of trade retaliation from Japan.
Paul Watson

There's no rest when you're on planetary duty.
Paul Watson

Ships are expendable; the whales are not.
Paul Watson

People are beginning to realize that we need to live in accordance with the law of ecology, the law of finite resources, and if we don't, we're going to go extinct.
Paul Watson

Sometimes going to jail is just the price you have to pay for social reform or social change.
Paul Watson

Killing a baby seal is about the easiest thing you can do if you're inclined to be sadistic; you certainly can't say there's any sport in it - the animal is totally defenceless.
Paul Watson

I have never suffered under any delusion that saving the whales in the Antarctic sanctuary would be easy, but the one thing I am certain of is that I and my passionate crew of international volunteers will never quit defending life in the seas from poachers, no matter what consequences we must endure to do so.
Paul Watson

My clients are the whales and the seals.
Paul Watson

I used to swim with these beavers in a beaver pond when I was 10. I went back when I was 11 and found there were no more beavers. I found that trappers had taken them all, so I became quite angry, and that winter I began to walk the trap lines and free animals from the traps and destroy the traps.
Paul Watson

There are very few fishermen left today.
Paul Watson

Captain Falco saw the diminishment of biodiversity in our oceans over a span of nearly seven decades. He was dedicated to the protection of life and habitats in the sea. He was a legendary mariner, diver, oceanographer, and conservationist. The world is a better place because of him.
Paul Watson

Sustainable fishing is a fraud. It's a marketing term that really means 'business as usual.'
Paul Watson

No species is more important than others.
Paul Watson

A fish is more valuable swimming in the sea maintaining the integrity of oceanic eco-systems than it is on anyone's plate.
Paul Watson

Does Greenpeace think it can stop whaling in Antarctica by publicly eating whale meat and declaring it delicious? What are these people thinking?
Paul Watson

The Brer Rabbit ploy has been quite effective for me. When a country is talking about prosecuting me, I demand to be charged and put on trial and offer to pay my own airfare. They know that I'm going to bring a lot of international media with me and put their whaling programme on trial, and they decide it's better to keep quiet and do nothing.
Paul Watson

Taiwan gives a lot of foreign aid to Costa Rica, so it looks like they are basically buying the right to fish, even though it's not legal.
Paul Watson

Bluefin tuna is sort of like the cheetah of the ocean. It's the fastest fish. It's a warm-blooded fish. But it's got a $100,000 price tag on its head.
Paul Watson

Sometimes we are separated by differences, and sometimes we are united by common ideals of respect and compassion.
Paul Watson

The oceans are the last free place on the planet.
Paul Watson

The only thing scarier than Godzilla is Godzilla's lawyers.
Paul Watson

I always say, 'I'm not a pirate, I just play one on TV.'
Paul Watson

The Polynesians used to have a system where they proclaimed a fishing area as 'taboo.' If any fisherman was caught fishing in a taboo area, they would be killed. The Polynesians understand that the fish had to be given a chance to recover.
Paul Watson

I feel that we have a responsibility to try to do everything we can to protect species, and the best way to do that is to uphold international conservation law.
Paul Watson

Actually, I never really look at myself as a real radical activist; I am more the conservative. I mean, the conservatives are trying to conserve; the radicals are destroying the planet.
Paul Watson

An American citizen is not going to be extradited to Japan for saving whales.
Paul Watson

Protesting against illegal activity is not piracy.
Paul Watson

Whales are killed today to supply the limited demand for whale meat or to be used in pet foods or as fodder for fur-bearing animals used in the fur trade.
Paul Watson

In 'Deadliest Catch,' we have men in ships in rough seas catching crabs. With 'Whale Wars,' we have men and women from a dozen different nations going out to sea in rough weather to help save the whales. We also have icebergs, whales, penguins, and dramatic ship-to-ship confrontations.
Paul Watson

People sometimes feel frustrated about what's going on in our oceans and environment, and 'Whale Wars' shows that ordinary people can take action and make things happen.
Paul Watson

Most people can't see the connection between their own lives and the oceans.
Paul Watson

I would just say that nobody could do what I do unless you had a big ego. It's the only way you can really put it. You have to be arrogant enough to challenge the arrogance of the human race.
Paul Watson

We live on the most incredible planet, and yet we abuse it, and we abuse it mercilessly.
Paul Watson

I don't see the point in making a distinction between natives having more of a right to kill whales than nonnative people.
Paul Watson

Greenpeace is the world's largest feel-good organisation now, and I can say that 'cause I am one of their co-founders.
Paul Watson

I don't eat fish because there is no such thing as sustainable fishing in the world right now.
Paul Watson

I take a biocentric point of view. I look at things from the point of view of the Earth and the laws of ecology. As opposed to the anthropocentric point of view, where everything revolves around humanity.
Paul Watson

It is true that many of the Sea Shepherd crewmembers are inexperienced, but the fact is that these volunteers bring a passion to the project that cannot be found in a hired crew.
Paul Watson

The United Nations World Charter for Nature, section 21, empowers any nongovernmental organisation or individual to uphold international conservation law in areas beyond national jurisdiction and specifically on the high seas.
Paul Watson

Pete Bethune is a hero in New Zealand. He's a hero worldwide to people who want to see the end of whaling.
Paul Watson

I wouldn't think I was successful if I didn't have just as many people hate me as support me.
Paul Watson

If you're dealing with criminals, they're not going to want to go to court.
Paul Watson

When I was born, there were three billion people on the planet.
Paul Watson

I feel that people should have a license to have children, that they have proper education how to raise children. And that nobody should be allowed to be a parent unless they can prove that they are competent enough to be a parent.
Paul Watson

Any social movement throughout history has always been carried out by only 7% of population being passionately active in that.
Paul Watson

I have an unexplainable belief that I will never cause harm or be harmed while at sea. Because of this, I feel secure at sea: I feel secure in the ice, I feel secure in the storms, and I feel secure in confrontations.
Paul Watson

We're close to losing our essential diversity. Look at our wheat crops - we rely on a handful of grain crops and plants that we've refined and bred over hundreds of years.
Paul Watson

My concern is not for the judicial system, but for the reality that the shark fin mafia of Costa Rica has a price on my head, and a Costa Rican prison would provide an excellent opportunity for someone to exercise this lethal contract against me.
Paul Watson

To me extremism is targeting endangered whales in a whale sanctuary in violation of a moratorium. That, to me, is extreme.
Paul Watson

I don't think that any government has a right to subvert the truth or to cover up the truth, and all I see WikiLeaks doing is exposing the truth.
Paul Watson

You don't get anywhere unless you've had a little bit of a complicated life.
Paul Watson

Being lampooned on 'South Park' is hardly something to complain about. They brought the issue of the dolphin and whale slaughter by the Japanese to a very large audience. I could not really care less how I was portrayed.
Paul Watson

Sea Shepherd is to terrorism what Groucho was to Marxism.
Paul Watson

The fact is, Japan's whaling is illegal, so just because there is a natural disaster in Japan is no reason for us to stop opposing their illegal activities in the Southern Ocean.
Paul Watson

I've had a lot of disappointments. I think my biggest disappointment is the failure of elected officials to make good on their promises in regards to the environment or anything else, really. I have very little faith in politicians.
Paul Watson

NATO isn't going to be concerned about fishing.
Paul Watson

Commercial fishermen are the greediest, stupidest people on earth.
Paul Watson

The biggest predator of fish like cod is other fish - and seals keep fish like that in check.
Paul Watson

Costa Rica and Germany have simply been pawns in the Japanese quest to silence Sea Shepherd in an attempt to stop our annual opposition of their illegal whaling activities.
Paul Watson