Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" 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
Content
Might
Related Quotes:
" 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
Now
Know
Struggle
" 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
Born
Someone
Story
" I am exhausted by traditional memoir. I am exhausted by the architecture of the conventional novel. "
David Shields
Architecture
Memoir
I Am
" 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
More
Literature
Key
" 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
Truth
Strange
" 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
Early
Late
Three
" 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
Me
Pretending
Years
" Nothing really changes: the individual's ability to project his message or throw his weight around remains minuscule. "
David Shields
Nothing
Ability
Changes
" 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
You
Writing
Hate
" A book makes claims of literary art. "
David Shields
Makes
Book
Claims
" 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
Reflect
Kind
Through
" I'm really drawn toward work that is trying to capture what it's like to think now and to live now. "
David Shields
Live
Capture
Work
" A sports writer is a stylist of some kind. He is trying to convey mood and character and emotion. "
David Shields
Character
Kind
Mood
" 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
Science
Like
Popular
" 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
Me
People
Page
" I like art with a visible string to the world. "
David Shields
String
Visible
World
" In many senses, creativity and 'plagiarism' are nearly indivisible. "
David Shields
Creativity
Plagiarism
Many
" 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
Level
Good
Enough
" Both of my parents were journalists, and my rebellion, such as it was, was to become a fiction writer. "
David Shields
Become
Both
Parents
" Life, in my view, is simple, tragic, and frighteningly beautiful. "
David Shields
Simple
Life
Beautiful
" Denied dancing and musical instruments, slaves expressed a hidden tradition of musicality and poetics by tongue and signal. "
David Shields
Hidden
Dancing
Tongue
" I'm just a totally selfish worker bee creating my little mini projects. "
David Shields
Bee
Selfish
Just
" 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
Web
Technology
New
" 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
Me
Life
War
" 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
Together
Think
Bloom
" You don't think anyone who lives an ordinary life has plenty of trouble and torment to write about? "
David Shields
Trouble
Life
Think
" 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
Person
Book
Know
" 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
Blue
Me
Talking
" I want the reader to join me on an intellectual and emotional journey into some major aspect of existence. "
David Shields
Join
Want
Me
" 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
Drums
Been
Art