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" Honesty is the best policy; the only way out is deeper in: a candid confrontation with existence is dizzying, liberating. "
David Shields
Way
Honesty Is
Honesty
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" 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
American
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Within
" You don't think anyone who lives an ordinary life has plenty of trouble and torment to write about? "
David Shields
Trouble
Life
Think
" Both of my parents were journalists, and my rebellion, such as it was, was to become a fiction writer. "
David Shields
Become
Both
Parents
" 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
Own
Now
" 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
Art
American
Thought
" The only requirement of a fan or a patient is the surrender to authority. "
David Shields
Only
Authority
Fan
" 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
Studying
Good
Time
" 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
" 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
Jewish
Here
City
" 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
Me
I Am
" 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
Pay
Rent
" I'm a sucker for sports movies. "
David Shields
Movies
Sucker
Sports
" I am exhausted by traditional memoir. I am exhausted by the architecture of the conventional novel. "
David Shields
Architecture
Memoir
I Am
" The reigning mythology of the Northwest is obviously nature, and the reigning mythology of the Northeast corridor is culture. "
David Shields
Northwest
Nature
Mythology
" A sports writer is a stylist of some kind. He is trying to convey mood and character and emotion. "
David Shields
Character
Kind
Mood
" 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
Day
Writing
Find
" 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
Back
Slow
Best
" I want the reader to join me on an intellectual and emotional journey into some major aspect of existence. "
David Shields
Join
Want
Me
" 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
Black
White
Life
" 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
" 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
" Life, in my view, is simple, tragic, and frighteningly beautiful. "
David Shields
Simple
Life
Beautiful
" Nothing really changes: the individual's ability to project his message or throw his weight around remains minuscule. "
David Shields
Nothing
Ability
Changes
" All good books wind up, I think, with the writer getting his teeth bashed in. "
David Shields
Teeth
Books
Good
" 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
Lazy
Fast
Silly
" 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
Did
Many
" 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
Me
Three
Want
" 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
Team
Passion
Better
" When you're in New York City or Boston or something, you feel surrounded by cities and by culture. "
David Shields
City
You
New York
" 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
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