Thomas McGuane Quotes

The function of the novel is the exploration of the human condition. Really, that's what it's all about.

I love Victorian novels, the way they capture the nuances of the human condition.

It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning names.

I think Shakespeare had a lot to contribute with his understanding of the human condition.

Shakespeare has great ability to skirt around a subject and portray human nature.

I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about.

The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live. No good guys, no bad guys, just guys: that is, people bearing up in the crucible of their days and certainly not always - if ever - capable of articulating their condition.

Kafka is not interested in documenting the manners and mores of any particular place; he is not interested in probing the psyche of individual characters.

I think if you write about human relationships, you're always exploring the psyche and the soul. I don't separate certain - perhaps more extreme - things that people do from others.

I'm interested in writing that explores all sides of human beings.

It's interesting if you can talk about the large moments and also the small moments to understand the deepest complexities of a man by trying to imagine who they are.

What makes Shakespeare eternal is his grasp of psychology. He knew how to nail stuff about us as human beings.

Bradbury would have said his plots are myths and metaphors that tell stories about the human condition. That's what sets him apart from other science-fiction writers: He doesn't write about technology, but about the human heart and psyche.

Literature has become too psychological.

I am very interest in the human condition. That is what I love about acting. I like studying different people and their psychosis. I like discovering what makes them tick. I always find that with any character I play. I need to find out what makes them tick.

I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters.

The human condition is the human condition, and what we try to do is illuminate the human condition.

I'm not interested in going and doing a big, action-adventure romp with nothing to say about being a human being.

I think what's so brilliant about 'Black Mirror' is that it is a mirror into our own messed-up psyches.

I love the writing of Walter Tevis and what he views as the possibilities of science rather than science fiction.

For me, I start at the place that my characters are human. I start at the place that they are onions that are layered and meant to be peeled, just as we as human beings are.

Things happen in 'If This is a Man' that are beyond ordinary daily experience, but it is still us to whom they are happening, and the understanding Levi seeks is no different in kind from that sought by Shakespeare in 'King Lear', or Conrad in 'The Heart of Darkness'.

My books are not 'political.' I don't make political demands. They actually describe life. But when we look at human life, politics creeps in everywhere.

I like the movies that embrace the complexity of the human condition.

I'm someone who likes to explore the complexities in people.