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" 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
Begin
Think
New
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" 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
Someone
Me
" 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
" Your basic, well-made novel by Ian McEwan or Jonathan Franzen just bores me silly. "
David Shields
Novel
Just
Basic
" Every quality I despise in George Bush is a quality I despise in myself. He is my worst self realized. "
David Shields
Worst
Self
Quality
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
Culture
Violence
Language
" Denied dancing and musical instruments, slaves expressed a hidden tradition of musicality and poetics by tongue and signal. "
David Shields
Hidden
Dancing
Tongue
" I like art with a visible string to the world. "
David Shields
String
Visible
World
" 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
" 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 Beauty
Beauty
Try
" 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
" 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
Me
Like
World
" 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
" 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
Page
Time
Why
" 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
" 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
Work
Cut
Writer
" 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
" 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
" The ruling ethos of Seattle is forlorn apology for our animal impulses. "
David Shields
Animal
Apology
Our
" I'm a sucker for sports movies. "
David Shields
Movies
Sucker
Sports
" I want a nonfiction that explores our shifting, unstable, multiform, evanescent experience in and of the world. "
David Shields
Experience
Our
Want
" A book makes claims of literary art. "
David Shields
Makes
Book
Claims
" Reality isn't straightforward or easily accessible. "
David Shields
Accessible
Straightforward
Reality
" 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
" In many senses, creativity and 'plagiarism' are nearly indivisible. "
David Shields
Creativity
Plagiarism
Many
" The only requirement of a fan or a patient is the surrender to authority. "
David Shields
Only
Authority
Fan
" 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
" 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
Us
America
Black