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" 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
Me
Matter
Life
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" Straightforward fiction functions only as more Bubble Wrap, nostalgia, retreat. "
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" 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. "
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" You don't think anyone who lives an ordinary life has plenty of trouble and torment to write about? "
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" Good poets borrow; great poets steal. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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Fiction
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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You
Writing
Hate
" 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. "
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Jewish
Here
City
" I am exhausted by traditional memoir. I am exhausted by the architecture of the conventional novel. "
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Architecture
Memoir
I Am
" 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. "
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Natural Beauty
Beauty
Try
" 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
Thinking
People
Improvement
" The only requirement of a fan or a patient is the surrender to authority. "
David Shields
Only
Authority
Fan
" Every quality I despise in George Bush is a quality I despise in myself. He is my worst self realized. "
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Worst
Self
Quality
" 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. "
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Talk
Ice
Girl
" I like art with a visible string to the world. "
David Shields
String
Visible
World
" 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. "
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You
Death
Information
" The reigning mythology of the Northwest is obviously nature, and the reigning mythology of the Northeast corridor is culture. "
David Shields
Northwest
Nature
Mythology
" 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
" 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
Back
Problem
" 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
Angry
White
Rich
" I disagree with everything John Updike has ever said. "
David Shields
Everything
Disagree
Ever
" The ruling ethos of Seattle is forlorn apology for our animal impulses. "
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Animal
Apology
Our
" Honesty is the best policy; the only way out is deeper in: a candid confrontation with existence is dizzying, liberating. "
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Way
Honesty Is
Honesty
" Your basic, well-made novel by Ian McEwan or Jonathan Franzen just bores me silly. "
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Novel
Just
Basic
" The only rule is never be bored. "
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Bored
Only
Never
" 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
World
Crazy
People
" The novel is an artifact, which is why antiquarians cling to it so fervently. "
David Shields
Cling
Fervently
Novel