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" Straightforward fiction functions only as more Bubble Wrap, nostalgia, retreat. "
David Shields
Straightforward
Nostalgia
Bubble
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" 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 essential gesture of the contemporary novel is to get people to turn the page, to entertain them, and I hate that. I want a novel where the gesture is towards existential investigation on every page. That, to me, is thrilling. "
David Shields
Me
People
Page
" I just can't read, the way other people can, these tediously elaborated books. "
David Shields
Read
Other
Just
" 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
" 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 novel is an artifact, which is why antiquarians cling to it so fervently. "
David Shields
Cling
Fervently
Novel
" 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. "
David Shields
You
Death
Information
" 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
" Collage is not a kitchen sink; it's not a refuge for the compositionally disabled. "
David Shields
Disabled
Sink
Kitchen
" I hope readers will think that 'The Thing About Life' is beautifully patterned, a tapestry. "
David Shields
About
Life
Tapestry
" The difference between kitties and humans is that we are aware of our mortal condition, and the burden of consciousness is to evoke and embody and explore the coordinates of our condition. "
David Shields
Burden
Explore
Our
" You could easily do a book of Marshawn Lynch's quotes, which have a quite serious political pushback. I think he's really amazing. "
David Shields
Book
Amazing
You
" I went to graduate school in Iowa City, at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where the most passionate thing I did was attend University of Iowa basketball games. "
David Shields
Basketball
School
Passionate
" 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
" 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 worry that I am not really a person anymore: I'm more of just a writing machine. I wonder what that has done to either my life and or my art. "
David Shields
Worry
Writing
Art
" 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
" The movie - any sports movie - becomes a praise song to life here on earth, to physical existence itself, beyond striving, beyond economic necessity. "
David Shields
Earth
Sports
Song
" In the case of the Web, each of us has slightly more access to a mass audience - a few more people slide through the door - but Facebook is finally a crude, personal multimedia conglomerate machine, personal nation-state machine, reality-show machine. New gadgets alter social patterns, new media eclipse old ones, but the pyramid never goes away. "
David Shields
Media
Personal
Audience
" If the bus driver is black, I thank him... when I get off at my spot, whereas I would never think of doing this if the driver were white. "
David Shields
Black
Think
Never
" 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'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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" We judge athletes as if we all don't have trouble performing our various duties from time to time. "
David Shields
Judge
Our
Performing
" 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
" I am exhausted by traditional memoir. I am exhausted by the architecture of the conventional novel. "
David Shields
Architecture
Memoir
I Am
" 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
" 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. "
David Shields
Talk
Ice
Girl