David Shields Quotes

Powerful David Shields for Daily Growth

About David Shields

David Shields (born April 2, 1965) is an influential American essayist, novelist, and media critic known for his experimental writing style that blurs the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction. Born in Seattle, Washington, Shields spent his early years surrounded by music, as his father was a jazz musician and his mother worked at a record store. This exposure to diverse sounds and ideas would later influence his work. Shields attended Yale University, where he received his BA in English in 1987. He then pursued an MFA at the University of Iowa, completing it in 1990. His early career saw him teaching creative writing and media studies at various institutions, including the University of Washington, Rutgers University, and New York University. Shields' literary journey began with his first novel, "Black Planet" (1998), a semiautobiographical work about his love for basketball and hip-hop music. However, he rose to prominence with the publication of "Reality Hunger" (2010), a groundbreaking book that argued for a new form of literature that embraces appropriation and collage techniques. Influenced by pop culture, contemporary art, and philosophical thought, Shields' works often challenge conventional storytelling norms. Some of his notable books include "The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead" (2015), "How Literature Saved My Life" (2013), and "I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel" (co-authored with cultural critic Jonathan Lethem, 2007). Shields has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His innovative approach to writing continues to inspire writers and readers alike, pushing the boundaries of what literature can be.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult."

This quote by David Shields underscores the complexity and unpredictability of life. The statement "life is short" indicates that we have a limited time to live, learn, and create. The phrase "art long" suggests that mastering any art form requires extensive practice and dedication. The combination implies that our lifespan might not be enough to fully develop our skills in various areas. The word "opportunity fleeting" signifies that chances or opportunities may pass us by quickly, emphasizing the importance of seizing them when they arise. "Experience treacherous" suggests that life can be deceptive and full of challenges, making it hard to navigate and make informed decisions. Lastly, "judgment difficult" underscores the complexity involved in evaluating our own actions and those of others, as well as discerning right from wrong or good from bad. Overall, David Shields' quote highlights that life is a challenging journey, where we must make the most of limited opportunities, learn from our experiences, and exercise good judgment despite its difficulty.

"The desire for certainty is perhaps our greatest enemy."

The quote by David Shields highlights the potential danger of an unrelenting pursuit for absolute truth or certainty. This relentlessness can hinder growth, learning, and empathy as it encourages us to rigidly hold onto beliefs without room for doubt, questioning, or change – essential elements for understanding the complexities of life. The pursuit of certainty may lead individuals to ignore nuances, overlook contradictions, and disregard different perspectives, thereby limiting their understanding of the world. Instead, embracing uncertainty can foster flexibility, adaptability, and open-mindedness, promoting a more holistic and inclusive view of reality.

"Reality is a thing of the past, fiction a thing of the future."

This quote by David Shields suggests that reality is something that has already happened and can be understood retrospectively, while fiction, being unreal, represents possibilities or potentialities yet to occur. Essentially, Shields is proposing a view where the past (reality) and future (fiction) are our means of understanding and imagining our existence, with the present being the intersection point where these two dimensions meet.

"Originality is irrelevant; authenticity is everything."

This quote by David Shields emphasizes that what truly matters in creativity and self-expression is authenticity, not originality. In other words, it's essential to be true to oneself, one's experiences, and emotions, rather than striving for something completely new or unprecedented. Authenticity lends credibility and depth to a work of art or personal expression because it reveals the creator's genuine voice and perspective. While originality may be admired, authenticity touches us on a deeper, more human level, allowing others to connect with the artist and understand their truth.

"Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth."

This quote by David Shields suggests that fiction, although not factual in nature, serves as a powerful tool to express and convey deeper truths about human experiences, emotions, and realities. By creating stories and characters that don't exist, authors can explore themes and ideas in ways that might be too complex, sensitive, or difficult to portray directly in reality. Fiction allows us to delve into the complexity of our world and ourselves, ultimately helping us better understand the truth about life.

When you're in New York City or Boston or something, you feel surrounded by cities and by culture.

- David Shields

Boston, New, Surrounded, Cities

The essential gesture of the contemporary novel is to get people to turn the page, to entertain them, and I hate that. I want a novel where the gesture is towards existential investigation on every page. That, to me, is thrilling.

- David Shields

Want, Entertain, Them, Thrilling

Aging followed by death is the price we pay for the immortality of our genes. You find this information soul-killing; I find it thrilling, liberating.

- David Shields

Death, Immortality, Genes, Thrilling

From Matthew Brady and the Civil War through, say, Robert Capa in World War II to people like Malcolm Brown and Tim Page in Vietnam. There was, seems to me, a kind of war-is-hell photography where the photographer is actually filming from life.

- David Shields

Life, Through, World War, Robert

We're all Vanilla Ice. Look at Girl Talk and Danger Mouse. Look at William Burroughs, whose cut-up books antedate hip hop sampling by decades. Shakespeare remixed passages of Holinshed's 'Chronicles' in 'Henry VI.' Tchaikovsky's '1812 Overture' embeds the French national anthem.

- David Shields

Ice, Anthem, Hop, Hip

The N.C.A.A. is a multibillion-dollar business built on the talents of players who are often unqualified for or uninterested in being students and who benefit materially from the system only if they are among the few who turn professional.

- David Shields

Business, Players, Built, Unqualified

Immanence, or complicity, allows the writer to be a kind of shock absorber of the culture: to reflect back its 'whatness,' refracted through the sensibility of his consciousness.

- David Shields

Kind, Consciousness, Through, Sensibility

I'm just a totally selfish worker bee creating my little mini projects.

- David Shields

Bee, Selfish, Projects, Mini

I'm a sucker for sports movies.

- David Shields

Sports, Movies, Sucker

I began as a fiction writer - I had written three novels in my 20s and 30s. But as my work has gravitated towards literary nonfiction, or lyric essay or poetic essay, whatever you want to call it, I'm constantly beating my head against the wall 'cause I'm teaching a genre that's no longer that exciting to me and that I'm no longer practicing.

- David Shields

Fiction, Against, Literary, Beating

Honesty is the best policy; the only way out is deeper in: a candid confrontation with existence is dizzying, liberating.

- David Shields

Best, Existence, Way, Liberating

I don't know what's the matter with me, why I'm so adept at distance, why I feel so remote from things, why life feels like a rumor.

- David Shields

Distance, Like, Feels, Adept

The ways in which I was obsessed with Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp 20 years ago is completely replicated by my daughters' and my crush on Marshawn Lynch and Richard Sherman now.

- David Shields

Obsessed, Which, Richard, Shawn

I want a nonfiction that explores our shifting, unstable, multiform, evanescent experience in and of the world.

- David Shields

World, Want, Evanescent, Unstable

Considering the relatively brief careers of professional athletes, teenagers who are good enough to play at the highest level should be able to exploit that market.

- David Shields

Play, Brief, Highest Level, Considering

In many senses, creativity and 'plagiarism' are nearly indivisible.

- David Shields

Senses, Nearly, Many, Plagiarism

A major focus of 'Reality Hunger' is appropriation and plagiarism and what these terms mean. I can hardly treat the topic deeply without engaging in it. That would be like writing a book about lying and not being permitted to lie in it.

- David Shields

Book, Treat, About, Plagiarism

During Ronald Reagan's administration, '60 Minutes' ran a segment about the difference between Reagan's rhetoric and Reagan's actions. The show thought it had produced a hard-hitting piece; Reagan's team called up '60 Minutes' to thank them for the 15-minute commercial.

- David Shields

Thought, Commercial, Reagan, 60 Minutes

In the NBA, as in nowhere else in America, white people are utterly beholden to black people, and they're not about to let us off that easily. It's a kind of very mild payback for the last 500 years.

- David Shields

Kind, Last, Very, Beholden

New artists, it seems to me, have to learn the mechanics of computing/programming and - possessing a vision unhumbled by technology - use them to disassemble/recreate the Web.

- David Shields

Learn, New, Use, Possessing

I want work that, possessing as thin a membrane as possible between life and art, foregrounds the question of how the writer solves being alive.

- David Shields

Art, Question, Alive, Possessing

I'm very fond of this phrase: 'Collage is not a refuge for the compositionally disabled.' If you put together the pieces in a really powerful way, I think you'll let a thousand discrepancies bloom.

- David Shields

Think, I Think, Very, Bloom

I think there are people who are born storytellers. I think of someone like T. C. Boyle or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I think really, without putting any pejorative on it, they're like carnival barkers, 'Come into the tent, and I'll tell you this story.'

- David Shields

Tent, I Think, Putting, Gabriel

The individual has now risen to the level of a mini-government or mini-corporation. Via YouTube and Twitter, each of us is our own mini-network.

- David Shields

YouTube, Individual, Level, Risen

In music, they're not endlessly rewriting Beethoven's 'Third Symphony;' in visual art, they aren't painting portraits of 16th-century royalty. Art moves forward.

- David Shields

Art, Forward, Endlessly, Beethoven

Gerald Jonas's book about stuttering is called 'The Disorder of Many Theories.' Back theory seems to suffer from the same 'Rashomon' effect: as with almost every human problem, there is no dearth of answers and no answer.

- David Shields

Book, About, Almost, Dearth

Your basic, well-made novel by Ian McEwan or Jonathan Franzen just bores me silly.

- David Shields

Me, Silly, Bores, Jonathan

Take Jonathan Franzen's work: it's just old wine in new bottles. They say he's the Tolstoy of the digital age, but there can only be a Tolstoy of the Tolstoyan age.

- David Shields

Work, Digital, New, Jonathan

People like Ian McEwan and Jonathan Franzen completely bore me.

- David Shields

Me, People, Like, Jonathan

The N.F.L.'s rule on underclassmen should be abolished, and the N.B.A. should be discouraged from adding an age limit.

- David Shields

Limit, Should, Adding, Discouraged

I like some of Annie Proulx, some of those very brief stories of hers. And I love J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello. I like Geoff Dyer. I also liked W. G. Sebald, especially his book 'The Emigrants'.

- David Shields

Love, Some, Costello, Annie

The trajectory of nearly all technology follows this downward and widening path: by the time a regular person is able to create his own TV network, it doesn't matter anymore that I have or am on a network.

- David Shields

TV, By The Time, Downward, Trajectory

I think the core of fans' relationship is one that vacillates schizophrenically and mercurially from reverence to resentment. Fans fetishize the players' athletic genius and both deify it and demonize it; witness the way awe turns into anger whenever a player holds out or flips off the offensive coordinator.

- David Shields

Anger, I Think, Turns, Flips

Are black people conscious of how excruciatingly self-conscious white people have become in their every interaction with black people? Is this self-consciousness an improvement? Maybe not, because I'm thinking of people in categories rather than as people, which is a famously dangerous thing to do.

- David Shields

Dangerous, Maybe, Rather, Categories

The thing I hate the most in any kind of writing is self-righteousness. Where you pretend you don't have the same kinds of flaws your subject has.

- David Shields

Kind, Subject, Kinds, Flaws

I'm interested in non-fiction, but a form of it which is very badly behaved, which doesn't define itself as straight-ahead journalism or memoir. It blurs boundaries, plays fast and loose with the truth - not to be silly, whimsical or lazy, but to get greater purchase on what it feels like to be alive.

- David Shields

Very, Feels, Badly, Loose

In the case of the Web, each of us has slightly more access to a mass audience - a few more people slide through the door - but Facebook is finally a crude, personal multimedia conglomerate machine, personal nation-state machine, reality-show machine. New gadgets alter social patterns, new media eclipse old ones, but the pyramid never goes away.

- David Shields

Door, Through, Slightly, Slide

Denied dancing and musical instruments, slaves expressed a hidden tradition of musicality and poetics by tongue and signal.

- David Shields

Dancing, Slaves, Instruments, Signal

Collage is not a kitchen sink; it's not a refuge for the compositionally disabled.

- David Shields

Refuge, Collage, Sink, Kitchen

The reigning mythology of the Northwest is obviously nature, and the reigning mythology of the Northeast corridor is culture.

- David Shields

Nature, Reigning, Corridor, Northeast

Our culture is obsessed with real events because we experience hardly any.

- David Shields

Culture, Real, Obsessed, Hardly

Literature matters so much to me I can hardly stand it.

- David Shields

Me, Matters, Literature, Hardly

I really love that idea of the essay as an investigation. That's all anyone's life is.

- David Shields

Love, Idea, Anyone, Essay

Both of my parents were journalists, and my rebellion, such as it was, was to become a fiction writer.

- David Shields

Rebellion, Fiction, Were, Fiction Writer

You don't think anyone who lives an ordinary life has plenty of trouble and torment to write about?

- David Shields

Think, Torment, Lives, Ordinary Life

Swimming is by far the best tonic I've found for my back. I'm not a good swimmer - I do the breaststroke or elementary backstroke in the slow lane - but when I took a two-week break from swimming I was surprised how much I missed it.

- David Shields

Good, Best, Back, Swimmer

In a way, it's taken me 25 years to acknowledge that I am from the West Coast. I was always sort of pretending I was bicoastal or that I really belonged on the East Coast.

- David Shields

Pretending, Always, Sort, East Coast

The real impulse of most books is to tell a story to keep the reader lashed to the page. I don't get why that's a proper use of an adult's time.

- David Shields

Tell, Use, Reader, Impulse

One of my clearest, happiest memories is of myself at fourteen, sitting up in bed, being handed a large glass of warm buttermilk by my mother because I had a sore throat, and she saying how envious she was that I was reading 'The Catcher in the Rye' for the first time.

- David Shields

Bed, Throat, Clearest, Sore

I went to graduate school in Iowa City, at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where the most passionate thing I did was attend University of Iowa basketball games.

- David Shields

Passionate, Iowa, Attend, Graduate School

I argued strongly to the American publisher that 'Reality Hunger' should come out first. They thought that 'The Thing About Life' would have more appeal because it's on a broader topic; it's about mortality rather than art.

- David Shields

Thought, Rather, Argued, Broader

I'm really interested in the new nonfiction. I think the hyper-digital culture has changed our brains in ways we cannot begin to fathom.

- David Shields

Think, New, I Think, Fathom

We've been appropriating in art since Duchamp, and we've been appropriating in music since the first person was banging on drums.

- David Shields

Music, Art, Been, Banging

I am truly bored with 99 per cent of conventional novels. I do think it's a somewhat desiccated form.

- David Shields

Think, Cent, Am, Novels

In my twenties and early thirties, I wrote three novels, but beginning in my late thirties, I wearied of the mechanics of fiction writing, got interested in collage nonfiction, and have been writing literary collage ever since.

- David Shields

Beginning, Been, Twenties, Novels

The novel is an artifact, which is why antiquarians cling to it so fervently.

- David Shields

Why, Which, Fervently, Cling

If the bus driver is black, I thank him... when I get off at my spot, whereas I would never think of doing this if the driver were white.

- David Shields

Doing, Think, Bus, Whereas

The only requirement of a fan or a patient is the surrender to authority.

- David Shields

Patient, Authority, Fan, Surrender

I used to feel that everything I know I learned through my lifelong struggle with stuttering; I now feel this way about my damn back.

- David Shields

Through, Learned, Lifelong, Struggle

I suspect the real reason the N.F.L. and N.B.A. don't want high schoolers and college underclassmen to play with their ball is that they don't want to jeopardize their relationship with National Collegiate Athletic Association, which serves as a sort of free minor league and unpaid promotional department for the pros.

- David Shields

College, Play, Reason, Department

Sports - especially the NBA - function as a place where American society pretends to discuss and pretends to solve questions and historical agonies that can't possibly be solved within the realm of sports.

- David Shields

Sports, Questions, Within, Possibly

I try to be as honest as I possibly can about the contradictions within my own heart and thereby get to something 'true' and revealing and important about contemporary American culture and human nature.

- David Shields

Nature, My Own, Within, Possibly

To be honest, there are parts of 'How Literature Saved My Life' that began as interviews. Someone was telling me that they think the book sounds very phonic: that it sounds like me speaking. And I don't think it's a coincidence that there are six to ten passages that I cadged from various interviews that I did post-'Reality Hunger'.

- David Shields

My Life, Very, Telling, Coincidence

Sports passion is deeply, infamously territorial: our city-state is better than your city-state because our city-state's team beat your city-state's team. My attachment to the Sonics is approximately the reverse of this.

- David Shields

Sports, Team, Your, Territorial

All good books wind up, I think, with the writer getting his teeth bashed in.

- David Shields

Good, Think, I Think, Wind

The ruling ethos of Seattle is forlorn apology for our animal impulses.

- David Shields

Ruling, Forlorn, Ethos, Apology

I would hate to be that person who is, you know, the mystery writer who has to deliver a book every year to publisher X.

- David Shields

Book, Year, Deliver, Publisher

We judge athletes as if we all don't have trouble performing our various duties from time to time.

- David Shields

Performing, Athletes, Our, From Time To Time

The 'Times' is understood to be almost the unofficial biographer of the country, in some strange way to be printing a kind of quasi-neutral truth or even, in some people's minds, slightly center-left version of reality.

- David Shields

Country, Some, Slightly, Printing

From the first slave ship arriving in harbor, America stole and judged blacks. Black life that didn't fit into white logic was commercially exploited or lynched.

- David Shields

Ship, Black, Harbor, Stole

Seattle is still more Caucasian than most medium-sized cities. The sort of psychosexual politics of white fandom in context of black athletes who are also both very rich and slightly angry is just, to me, bottomlessly fascinating.

- David Shields

Politics, Very, Slightly, Seattle

Seattle has shaped me in a lot of ways.

- David Shields

Ways, Shaped, Lot, Seattle

I'm not super-polite or civil - I try to be civil, but I'm not into Seattle's niceties, and I'm not hugely wired into Seattle's natural beauty.

- David Shields

Natural, Hugely, Wired, Seattle

Seattle's not a particularly Jewish city, and I'm not in any way religious. Since I've been here, I've been a fairly productive, even obsessively productive, writer.

- David Shields

Here, Been, Religious, Seattle

I worry that I am not really a person anymore: I'm more of just a writing machine. I wonder what that has done to either my life and or my art.

- David Shields

Art, Worry, My Life, I Wonder

Flipping through the channels late at night, I'll come across 'The Longest Yard' and not be able to get up off the couch until Burt Reynolds has scored the winning touchdown.

- David Shields

Through, Yard, Longest, Channels

The key thing for an intellectually rigorous writer to come to grips with is the marginalization of literature by more technologically sophisticated and thus more visceral forms.

- David Shields

Sophisticated, Grips, Thus, Forms

That's why people read books. You get to have the real conversation, as opposed to the pseudo-conversations we have in everyday life.

- David Shields

Why, Opposed, Read, Everyday

I think of sports writers as mediating between two worlds. Athletes probably think of sports writers as not macho enough. And people in high culture probably think of sports writers as jocks or something. They are in an interestingly complex position in which they have to mediate the world of body and the world of words.

- David Shields

Body, I Think, Worlds, Macho

I like having a paperback original. And until literature catches up with the culture - the violence, language, syntax, compression, concision, complexity and diversity that the Internet offers - books still make sense.

- David Shields

Complexity, Still, Offers, Paperback

I still see life entirely through its Darwinian prism. I keep trying to shake off the aftereffects of writing 'The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead', and I find I can't.

- David Shields

Through, Shake, Still, Prism

As a work gets more autobiographical, more intimate, more confessional, more embarrassing, it breaks into fragments.

- David Shields

Work, More, Breaks, Embarrassing

The only rule is never be bored.

- David Shields

Never, Only, Rule, Bored

All human beings have bodies. All bodies are mortal. Yours, too, is one of these bodies.

- David Shields

Human Beings, Too, Bodies, Yours

I believe in copyright, within limited precincts. But I also believe in fair use, public domain, and especially transformation.

- David Shields

Within, Copyright, Limited, I Believe

Sports movies are often very good at dramatizing the intersection of public and private realms: the body politic.

- David Shields

Sports, Private, Very, Politic

I'm obviously aware that most people don't agree with me, that people like to escape into a coherent world that is apart from their own.

- David Shields

Own, Like, Coherent, Apart

I am exhausted by traditional memoir. I am exhausted by the architecture of the conventional novel.

- David Shields

I Am, Memoir, Traditional, Novel

What I'm definitely against is the plodding, paint-by-numbers 19th-century-style novel that's still being written today. I just don't understand why you'd read or write that in 2011.

- David Shields

Against, Still, Read, Novel

A sports writer is a stylist of some kind. He is trying to convey mood and character and emotion.

- David Shields

Character, Emotion, Some, Convey

Basically, I really love work that puts the reader into a kind of vertigo, into a real doubt, and a beautiful way to convey that, a really perfect metaphor for that, is to make the reader also experience doubt.

- David Shields

Love, Work, Perfect, Convey

Life, in my view, is simple, tragic, and frighteningly beautiful.

- David Shields

Beautiful, Simple, View, Tragic

When I was studying at the Iowa Writers School, I read a sports writer, Ron Maly, from the Des Moines Register. He was a good sports writer. I became real interested in the contrast between Lute Olson, who was the coach of Iowa at the time, and Ron Maly.

- David Shields

Good, Iowa, Became, Des Moines

Art, like science, progresses, and to me it's bizarre that a lot of acclaimed and popular and respectable books are not advancing the art form.

- David Shields

Art, Like, Bizarre, Advancing

Good poets borrow; great poets steal.

- David Shields

Good, Steal, Poets, Borrow

I hope readers will think that 'The Thing About Life' is beautifully patterned, a tapestry.

- David Shields

Think, Tapestry, Readers, Beautifully

We like non-fiction because we live in fictitious times.

- David Shields

Because, Like, Times, Fictitious

Our lives aren't prepackaged along narrative lines and, therefore, by its very nature, reality-based art - underprocessed, underproduced - splinters and explodes.

- David Shields

Art, Very, Lives, Lines

In the summer of 1956, my mother was pregnant with me, which caused my father to confess his fear that I was going to be too much of a burden for him because he had a history of depression.

- David Shields

Going, Which, Caused, Pregnant

I'm trying to use myself and my own flawedness as a metaphor for general human experience. I'm trying to 'stand next to' a subject, whether it's Bobby Knight or Vince Carter, and use that subject to meditate on both him and me.

- David Shields

Next, Use, Subject, Human Experience

We're completely confused about the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. To me, the moment you compose, you're fictionalising; the moment you remember, you're dreaming. It's ludicrous that we have to pretend that non-fiction has to be real in some absolute sense.

- David Shields

Some, Fiction, Dreaming, Be Real

I've always liked this idea that writing should comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable to create trouble. The value of a work of art can be measured by the harm spoken of it. If you're not feeling that, then absolutely, why bother?

- David Shields

Idea, Measured, Harm, Afflicted

I do not think it feasible to examine the phenomenon of hatefulness without being hateful.

- David Shields

Think, Examine, Feasible, Hateful

The difference between kitties and humans is that we are aware of our mortal condition, and the burden of consciousness is to evoke and embody and explore the coordinates of our condition.

- David Shields

Explore, Consciousness, Our, Embody

A book makes claims of literary art.

- David Shields

Art, Book, Literary, Claims

You, Dad, in the large scheme of things, don't matter. I, Dad, don't matter. We're vectors on the grids of cellular life.

- David Shields

Large, Scheme, Dad, Cellular

My particular demigod is the Sonics point guard Gary Payton, who is one of the most notorious trash-talkers in the National Basketball Association. He's not really bad. He's only pretend bad - I know that - but he allows me to fantasize about being bad.

- David Shields

Bad, Fantasize, Notorious, Point Guard

The originating sin of America is slavery, for which reparations should be paid and will never be paid; as a result, mini-reparations are paid daily, and the NBA remains, for me, reparations theater.

- David Shields

Will, Which, Remains, Reparations

Centenarians tend to be assertive, suspicious, and practical.

- David Shields

Suspicious, Practical, Tend, Assertive

I felt like I was definitely seeing something - the falsely gorgeous images of war, painted, almost invariably, in 'Times' combat photos.

- David Shields

Like, Images, Almost, Invariably

It's hard not to read the success of someone like Hilary Mantel as the product of a world that is too nervous, too crazy, and perhaps too interesting for some people.

- David Shields

Product, Some, Read, Some People

We hunger for connection to a larger community.

- David Shields

Connection, Larger, Hunger

So many of the things I talk about in 'Reality Hunger' seem to be the things that 'The Thing About Life' does - things like risk, contradiction, compression, mixing modes of attack from the memoristic gesture to data-crunching.

- David Shields

Like, Modes, Mixing, Hunger

Straightforward fiction functions only as more Bubble Wrap, nostalgia, retreat.

- David Shields

Nostalgia, Straightforward, Wrap

I'm really drawn toward work that is trying to capture what it's like to think now and to live now.

- David Shields

Think, Like, Toward, Capture

When it's between the covers of a book, content is perceived to have literary substance - or more so that it might otherwise.

- David Shields

More, Might, Otherwise, Covers

Every writer from Montaigne to William S. Burroughs has pasted and cut from previous work. Every artist, whether it's Warhol or, you know, Dangermouse or whoever.

- David Shields

Cut, Warhol, Previous, Pasted

All art is theft.

- David Shields

Art, Theft

I have a teaching job that allows me to pay the rent and affords me to, frankly, write the books I want to write.

- David Shields

Want, Books, Frankly, Affords

It's true of so many fiction writers that I much prefer the essayistic work they did, whether it's David Foster Wallace's, or John Cheever's, or Nathaniel Hawthorne's.

- David Shields

Fiction Writers, Prefer, David

I am interested in work that jumps boundaries, and that makes trouble. Part of me is comfortable with that: with being a bit of a troublemaker.

- David Shields

Work, Part, Makes, Jumps

I'm very drawn to the way in which a life lived can be an art of sorts or a failed art, and a life-lived-told can be art as well.

- David Shields

Art, Very, Which, Failed

Every quality I despise in George Bush is a quality I despise in myself. He is my worst self realized.

- David Shields

Myself, Realized, Bush, Quality

I want the reader to join me on an intellectual and emotional journey into some major aspect of existence.

- David Shields

Journey, Some, Reader, Intellectual

Stoicism is of no use to me whatsoever. What I'm a big believer in is talking about everything until you're blue in the face.

- David Shields

Big, Use, Whatsoever, Believer

Nothing really changes: the individual's ability to project his message or throw his weight around remains minuscule.

- David Shields

Changes, Nothing, Individual, Throw

The movie - any sports movie - becomes a praise song to life here on earth, to physical existence itself, beyond striving, beyond economic necessity.

- David Shields

Song, Here, Movie, Necessity

You could easily do a book of Marshawn Lynch's quotes, which have a quite serious political pushback. I think he's really amazing.

- David Shields

Think, I Think, Which, Serious

I like art with a visible string to the world.

- David Shields

Art, World, String, Visible

The American writer has his hands full, trying to understand and then describe and then make credible much of American reality.

- David Shields

Hands, Understand, Credible, Describe

I disagree with everything John Updike has ever said.

- David Shields

Everything, Disagree, Ever, John

I couldn't tell a story if my life depended on it. I'm the world's worst joke-teller.

- David Shields

My Life, Tell, Depended, Worst

Your art is most alive and dangerous when you use it against yourself. That's why I pick at my scabs.

- David Shields

Art, Alive, Use, Dangerous

Reality isn't straightforward or easily accessible.

- David Shields

Reality, Accessible, Easily, Straightforward

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