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" I think all good short stories are about what it means to tell a good story. "
David Means
Good
Story
Stories
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" I think that those moments before a performer plays are the moments when the potential for something to be created may - or may not - arrive. "
David Means
Think
Before
May
" In 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac,' Mr. Yorke's lyrics were often unfathomable, moaned and mumbled and forced beneath the surface of the music. In 'Hail to the Thief,' most but not all of the words can be decoded after a few listens. "
David Means
Music
Thief
Words
" You don't know what you need when you're a young writer. You can get small slivers of critical input, advice, comments, but if you're deep in the perplexity of your own process, as you should be, sorting it out in your own way, nothing is going to guide you more than small gestures of encouragement. "
David Means
You
Small
Know
" Iggy Pop is a pure Michigan product - gritty, smart, but not afraid of looking stupid or foolish. His father was once a high school English teacher. I love Iggy as a physical entity, sinewy, twisty - even in old age - an embodiment of rock and roll history. "
David Means
Teacher
Age
Father
" I'm a relatively optimistic kind of guy. "
David Means
Optimistic
Relatively
Kind
" A few days after 9/11, I put the old cassette of 'Born in the U.S.A.,' twisted and worn, on the car deck as I drove past West Point, across the Bear Mountain Bridge, along the Hudson River. It was the perfect moment to hear it. "
David Means
Car
Born
Mountain
" I love novels, and I read them more than anything, but stories cut in sharp and hard and are able to reveal things in a different way: they're highly charged, a slightly newer form, and inherently more contemporary. "
David Means
More
Love
Hard
" As a story writer, you have work with sharp but relatively small tools, the picks of metaphor, the shovel blade of images, the trowel of point of view, and then you delicately lift and brush in the revision with love and care knowing that one slip, and you might damage an extremely delicate thing. "
David Means
Love
Care
Small
" Alice Munro is an atomic writer blasting doors into narrative time. "
David Means
Atomic
Narrative
Writer
" I was an at-home father, taking care of them for seven years when they were babies. I was one of those new-age, at-home dads. "
David Means
Them
Care
Father
" Undergraduate writers seem to be, in a way, more open to letting themselves just write. "
David Means
Way
More
Just
" It's really hard to be a story writer - no matter how much acclaim you get - and not write a novel. "
David Means
Story
Matter
Hard
" Novels often thin themselves out to a watery hue - some even start that way - and at times seem to only ride along the surface of things, giving us what we already know, reporting the news that is just news. "
David Means
Know
Ride
News
" I find the middle classes kind of boring. The middle class has kind of been beaten like a dead horse by fictional writers. It's old news, and literature is supposed to bring new news, and for me, I feel I have to go as far out as I can to try and tell the kind of stories I want to tell. "
David Means
Literature
Me
News
" There is this idea of 'north,' and if you're from Michigan and you wandered the Upper Peninsula, you know what it feels like. The sky has a particular vibe, a coldness, stretching into the upper reaches of Canada. "
David Means
Like
Sky
You
" I'm not sure if a writer should talk about themes. Themes arrive out of the deeper structure and concerns, but to me, the main thing is getting it down right, writing about specific characters in specific predicaments, and finding a way to be true to the story itself, not only in the first burst of draft but in the revision, too. "
David Means
Finding
Story
Writing
" I don't think you could write fiction or create art unless you are sort of a positive person. "
David Means
You
Create
Art
" I studied English at the College of Wooster in Ohio, and I did an M.F.A. in Poetry at Columbia. "
David Means
Poetry
Did
Ohio
" America turns its back on the mentally ill. It likes to think it doesn't, but it does. "
David Means
Does
America
Likes
" It's better to know your story than not to know. "
David Means
Than
Know
Story
" I knew for years I wanted to write a novel that addressed the personal trauma of my older sister, who suffered - and still suffers - from mental illness. For a long time I imagined - and I know it's absurd - that she was an indirect casualty of the Vietnam War. "
David Means
Sister
Know
Long
" I think a good story can do as much as a novel; not the exact same thing, of course, but just as much artistically. They're different beasts, but to tackle an expansive country like the United States, you're either going to write a big novel, or go in to various points on the map and write stories or poems. "
David Means
Story
You
Country
" I think most short story writers, at one time or another, over the course of several books, naturally skirt near the edge of one genre or another. "
David Means
Story
Short
Over
" The more you know about Bob Dylan, the less you know. A truly enigmatic artist, Mr. Dylan's work and life offer vaporous handholds, explanations, and instructions. Attempt to grasp them, and they will only dissipate and re-form into another contexture or idea. "
David Means
Will
Life
Know
" Folk songs, whatever else they might be, are mainly craft. "
David Means
Songs
Whatever
Else
" There's a huge distance between who I am as a regular person and what takes place in my fiction. "
David Means
I Am
Place
Person
" I've got deep roots in Kalamazoo, with a grandfather, Harold Allen, who was a big part of Upjohn Co. for many years as the corporate secretary and friends with W. E. Upjohn. "
David Means
Grandfather
Years
Friends
" I write first drafts by hand, often out of the house somewhere, and then, when I've got a draft, type it up and let it sit, sometimes for a long time, and then when I'm ready, I work on revision. "
David Means
Long Time
Sit
Long
" You can't take a story and just stretch it out - that does not a novel make. "
David Means
Take
Out
You
" I'm not at all interested in simply reporting what's here right now, or cranking out an entertainment device that's going to touch the widest number of people. I'm interested in digging and excavating as deep as I can go into those small eternal moments and how they expand out, or close in, on the lives of my characters. "
David Means
People
Deep
I Can