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" We believe in cures; we're a quick-fix country, and we drive forward, and we eat up what we have extremely fast in terms of natural resources and also ideas and intellectual property. We're kind of wilfully stupid a lot of the time, anti-intellectual. "

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" 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

" My characters - no, make that most characters - are seeking the shelter of narrative resolution, a place of quiet and grace. "

" 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. "

" There's a huge distance between who I am as a regular person and what takes place in my fiction. "

" I like landscape, I guess. It's kind of a game to see how you can describe it. "

David Means

See

Landscape

" I'm a relatively optimistic kind of guy. "

" Americans are pragmatic; we want quick, clean, simple solutions to vast problems. The paradox is that we're a deeply confessional culture, but we're not often contemplative. "

" A kiss is often about the future and the past. A lost dream, about the discretion of the idealism. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I don't think you could write fiction or create art unless you are sort of a positive person. "

" 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

Sky

You

" I was a kid who was born and raised on Johnny Cash. My father played 'At Folsom Prison' constantly. Cash was the only thing I remember coming from our big, warm stereo console. Even then, I knew Cash was uncool. I knew he was an unhip Republican. "

" 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. "

" From George Martin's classically inspired production of the Beatles to Peter Gabriel's early solo masterpieces, to Stereolab's beautiful loops and blips, U.K.-based bands have often found a way to squeeze warmth and compassion from the stone-cold - especially now that the tubes are gone - machinery of the recording studio. "

" I think all good short stories are about what it means to tell a good story. "

" Undergraduate writers seem to be, in a way, more open to letting themselves just write. "

David Means

Way

Just

" I don't want to be a commentator of my own work. If you've written the story, you've said what you want to say. "

" 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. "

" A good folk song tells you something you already know, in a form you're already familiar with, on terms that were set down long before you were born - when the country was primarily windblown dust, open wagon trains, and dysfunctional towns like Deadwood. "

" A short story collection can be as exciting as a novel. It is a real complete experience, like when you listen to a real good recording, a Beatles record, and there are so many good songs. "

" In the days following 9/11, when we were reeling and disoriented, there was a kind of solace to be found in old recordings, and even pseudo-folk singers like James Taylor seemed to be safeguarding something, drawing back bygone days. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

Love

Hard

" 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. "

" I studied English at the College of Wooster in Ohio, and I did an M.F.A. in Poetry at Columbia. "

" America turns its back on the mentally ill. It likes to think it doesn't, but it does. "

" 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. "

" You can't take a story and just stretch it out - that does not a novel make. "