Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" 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
Related Quotes:
" 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
" The originating sin of America is slavery, for which reparations should be paid and will never be paid; as a result, mini-reparations are paid daily, and the NBA remains, for me, reparations theater. "
David Shields
Sin
Slavery
America
" The only requirement of a fan or a patient is the surrender to authority. "
David Shields
Only
Authority
Fan
" 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
" Nothing really changes: the individual's ability to project his message or throw his weight around remains minuscule. "
David Shields
Nothing
Ability
Changes
" 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
" A major focus of 'Reality Hunger' is appropriation and plagiarism and what these terms mean. I can hardly treat the topic deeply without engaging in it. That would be like writing a book about lying and not being permitted to lie in it. "
David Shields
Focus
Lie
Lying
" 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 hope readers will think that 'The Thing About Life' is beautifully patterned, a tapestry. "
David Shields
About
Life
Tapestry
" I'm trying to use myself and my own flawedness as a metaphor for general human experience. I'm trying to 'stand next to' a subject, whether it's Bobby Knight or Vince Carter, and use that subject to meditate on both him and me. "
David Shields
Trying
Stand
Myself
" Your basic, well-made novel by Ian McEwan or Jonathan Franzen just bores me silly. "
David Shields
Novel
Just
Basic
" 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
" I think the core of fans' relationship is one that vacillates schizophrenically and mercurially from reverence to resentment. Fans fetishize the players' athletic genius and both deify it and demonize it; witness the way awe turns into anger whenever a player holds out or flips off the offensive coordinator. "
David Shields
Anger
Think
Relationship
" Both of my parents were journalists, and my rebellion, such as it was, was to become a fiction writer. "
David Shields
Become
Both
Parents
" 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
" 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've always liked this idea that writing should comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable to create trouble. The value of a work of art can be measured by the harm spoken of it. If you're not feeling that, then absolutely, why bother? "
David Shields
You
Work
Writing
" I felt like I was definitely seeing something - the falsely gorgeous images of war, painted, almost invariably, in 'Times' combat photos. "
David Shields
War
Almost
Seeing
" Your art is most alive and dangerous when you use it against yourself. That's why I pick at my scabs. "
David Shields
Yourself
Dangerous
Art
" 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
" 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
" During Ronald Reagan's administration, '60 Minutes' ran a segment about the difference between Reagan's rhetoric and Reagan's actions. The show thought it had produced a hard-hitting piece; Reagan's team called up '60 Minutes' to thank them for the 15-minute commercial. "
David Shields
Difference
Up
Thought
" A book makes claims of literary art. "
David Shields
Makes
Book
Claims
" Basically, I really love work that puts the reader into a kind of vertigo, into a real doubt, and a beautiful way to convey that, a really perfect metaphor for that, is to make the reader also experience doubt. "
David Shields
Doubt
Experience
Love
" I disagree with everything John Updike has ever said. "
David Shields
Everything
Disagree
Ever
" 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
" 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
" All human beings have bodies. All bodies are mortal. Yours, too, is one of these bodies. "
David Shields
Mortal
Human Beings
Human
" The N.F.L.'s rule on underclassmen should be abolished, and the N.B.A. should be discouraged from adding an age limit. "
David Shields
Age
Should
Discouraged
" As a work gets more autobiographical, more intimate, more confessional, more embarrassing, it breaks into fragments. "
David Shields
Work
Breaks
Embarrassing