David Shields Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.
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The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition.
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What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
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Secret families are really the bedrock issue of Western literature.
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Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep.
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When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can.
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The adolescent protagonist is one of the hallmarks of American literature.
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I read whenever possible, and I buy books all the time, sometimes online, but mostly from bookshops. I love literature. If you want to understand art, it's important to understand what is also happening in literature, in music, in science, in architecture.
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There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind.
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I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
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Journalism students need to understand it and need a solid background in the liberal arts, in sociology, economics, literature and language, because they won't get it later on.
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Literature is memory written down. All literature is memory.
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Chinatown is tremendously interesting... It's a part of the city that hasn't really been explored in crime literature or in any general literature. It's as though Chinatown didn't exist. People write about New York without mentioning Chinatown at all.
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I fell even more deeply in love with Tolkien's legendarium after studying Old English literature at uni, as I got a sense of the historical events and cultures that Tolkien used to create his world. My favourite of his imaginary locations is Lothlorien.
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I think Maus I is better than Maus II. The standard here is whether or not it's as good as a great book of prose literature and by that standard, no, it's not that great.
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Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found.
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It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe; but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese.
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The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.
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I had all the normal interests - I played basketball and I headed the school paper. But I also developed very early a great love for music and literature and the theater.
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Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.
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I start writing when I overcome my disgust with literature.
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I'm all about leaving a legacy behind and trying to cement myself as one of the greats. I don't just want to be remembered as the guy who beat Michael Phelps at the 2012 London Olympics - a one-hit wonder - I want to be an inspiration to the kids.
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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.
