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" 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

People

Page

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" Straightforward fiction functions only as more Bubble Wrap, nostalgia, retreat. "

" I want a nonfiction that explores our shifting, unstable, multiform, evanescent experience in and of the world. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The ruling ethos of Seattle is forlorn apology for our animal impulses. "

" When you're in New York City or Boston or something, you feel surrounded by cities and by culture. "

" I'm really drawn toward work that is trying to capture what it's like to think now and to live now. "

" 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

" I want the reader to join me on an intellectual and emotional journey into some major aspect of existence. "

David Shields

Join

Want

" 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. "

" I'm very drawn to the way in which a life lived can be an art of sorts or a failed art, and a life-lived-told can be art as well. "

" All art is theft. "

David Shields

Theft

Art

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Literature matters so much to me I can hardly stand it. "

David Shields

I Can

Stand

" Denied dancing and musical instruments, slaves expressed a hidden tradition of musicality and poetics by tongue and signal. "

" The ways in which I was obsessed with Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp 20 years ago is completely replicated by my daughters' and my crush on Marshawn Lynch and Richard Sherman now. "

" I believe in copyright, within limited precincts. But I also believe in fair use, public domain, and especially transformation. "

" That's why people read books. You get to have the real conversation, as opposed to the pseudo-conversations we have in everyday life. "

" 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

Content

Might

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm just a totally selfish worker bee creating my little mini projects. "

" I just can't read, the way other people can, these tediously elaborated books. "

" In the summer of 1956, my mother was pregnant with me, which caused my father to confess his fear that I was going to be too much of a burden for him because he had a history of depression. "

David Shields

History

Him

" 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. "

" I do not think it feasible to examine the phenomenon of hatefulness without being hateful. "

" All human beings have bodies. All bodies are mortal. Yours, too, is one of these bodies. "

" 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.' "