T. C. Boyle Quotes

It's all about story and character with me, and I don't care if the job is on daytime or prime time or the web. Hey, give me a good character and someone to listen, and I'll do my acting on a street corner.

I started doing standup when I was in college, and I would incorporate a lot of characters into my act.

When I was little, I was a voracious reader, and that really led me to acting as well. I loved being transported into someone else's life, and that's what reading provided me. I also really love to entertain people.

In the Netherlands I read the first chapter of Exquisite Corpse to an audience that laughed in all the places I thought were funny - an experience I've never had in America!

I don't care what anybody says. Stick to the spirit of the play and you're doing it right. It's about embracing the spirit of the text instead of noodling some idea about things.

Sometimes I start off shows by explaining to people that it's just a bunch of stories - I always say 'It's like standup, just less funny.'

Without talent, I don't care how funny the writers are or how many comedy lines they come up, without wrestlers you can't have a wrestling program.

I certainly tried to talk about less complex things, but I've had to accept that it's just not what I do. That isn't to say that my shows are depressing - they aren't. At least, I hope they aren't! The problem I have with stories about happy things is that they don't require any skill from a comic - they just repeat the details verbatim.

I really just love reading. It's my favorite thing, performing my poems live. Reading by reading, I just kind of follow my nose.

I definitely enjoyed being in front of an audience, making people laugh, and telling stories, so when I realized I could do all three at the same time, that was it.

Stand-up comedy is not a man's job. It's an alpha job: To be the only person in a room with a microphone who's allowed to talk.

There is nothing quite like having your book read and truly understood. It's all the better when it's someone who knows how to go out there and sell it.

I love to talk about people I've met being an entertainer. All my encounters in life - I roll it all into an hour and 30 minutes.

I think of myself as a theatre comic instead of club comic because I tend to talk for a bit before I start being funny. I don't really do the one-liners and five second bits or whatever. But it's good to work stuff out sometimes.

Theater, at the end of the day, is about ideas. It's about very large ideas. And if the play is beautifully written or smartly written and has incredible characters you follow on the journey, you take home these larger ideas. Whether it's 'Angels in America' or 'Lucky Guy' or 'Normal Heart,' you follow this moment-to-moment journey as an audience.

I don't think, as an actor, you should define what genre you want to do. Once you do that, you lose the sight to see the film and what its story is all about.

Where film can eat up story, theatre needs space and breath.

I can never say that I don't want to work anymore. That would be an absolute lie because I enjoy, I take delight in, working in films because I feel it's an honour, you know, to entertain people, to regale audiences.

I'd love to entertain people forever.

When you're in a good play and a good production, you find that you're in something that has a life beyond you. You think, 'Oh my goodness, this play's alive.'

Johnny Valentine's the one who said, 'I can't make them believe that wrestling is real, but I can make them believe I'm real.' It would take him forever because he was just stinkingly boring for 30 minutes of the 40-minute match, but he would let people hit him as hard as they could, and he would hit people as hard as he could.

People go into that arena, and they know the fix is in. They know what pro wrestling or sports entertainment is. That being said, they want it executed to the highest level so that they can suspend their disbelief and buy in, and so, in a world of make believe, you make people believe in you. It's as real as it can be.

For comics, Edinburgh makes no financial or medical sense. Get an audience; that's the first task. Once the punters are in, simply make them laugh for an hour, and then sweat on the critics.

A show could be 10 minutes, seven minutes, 94 minutes. We just need to tell the stories that need to be told.

I have a certain kind of a taste for what will make a good movie or a good play or theater.