David Shields Quotes

I couldn't tell a story if my life depended on it. I'm the world's worst joke-teller.

David Shields

• Life
• World

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Quotes to Explore

• Hollywood is strange in and of itself. People dress up and pretend to be other people, and you can either make millions of dollars, or no money. It's odd.

  

  Octavia Spencer
  • People
  • Up
  • Money

• The collusion of big business, big labor, and big government threaten the spirit of small business that makes America great.

  

  Foster Friess
  • Great
  • Business
  • America

• When I was in high school I used to sit by myself in the cafeteria - not necessarily by choice - but I thought it was funny to talk to people that weren't there.

  

  Zach Galifianakis
  • People
  • School
  • High

• I tried to play rugby but was never very good.

  

  Ralph Fiennes
  • Good
  • Never
  • Rugby

• I do hot yoga and TRX, a kind of suspension training.

  

  Yami Gautam
  • Kind
  • Training
  • Yoga

• There were points in my life where I felt oddly irresistible to women. I'm not in that state now and that makes me sad.

  

  Jack Nicholson
  • Life
  • Women
  • Sad

• In terms of Hurricane Sandy, I really do see some hopeful grassroots responses, particularly in the Rockaways, where people were very organized right from the beginning, where Occupy Sandy was very strong, where new networks emerged.

  

  Naomi Klein
  • People
  • Strong
  • Beginning

• The more I talk about things, the more I understand myself.

  

  Gavin Rossdale Bush
  • Myself
  • Understand
  • Talk

• There are times, especially when I was just getting into PC gaming, where I spent way less time playing than obsessing about the quality of the play.

  

  Palmer Luckey
  • Time
  • Quality
  • Gaming

• If you don't have liberty and self-determination, you've got nothing, that's what this is what this country is built on. And this is the ultimate self-determination, when you determine how and when you're going to die when you're suffering.

  

  Jack Kevorkian
  • Country
  • Die
  • Suffering

• I have a theory that there are still parts of our mental worlds that are still based around the age of between five and eight, and we just kind of pretend to be grown-up.

  

  Kate Bush
  • Up
  • Age
  • Kind

• I walk the streets, take the train, it's real simple. Some actors create their own mythology: 'Oh, I'm so famous I can't go places, because I created this mythology that I'm so famous I can't go places.'

  

  Samuel L. Jackson
  • Real
  • Simple
  • Famous

• I was born abroad, but my parents were both English. Still, those few years of separation, and then coming back to England as an outsider, did give me an ability to see the country in a slightly detached way. I suppose I was made aware of what Englishness actually is because I only became immersed in it later in life.

  

  Rachel Cusk
  • Life
  • Country
  • Parents

• I think nowadays, women are breaking the borders or the boundaries and also trying to give a new interpretation in terms of impact you can have to the society.

  

  Yang Lan
  • Women
  • Trying
  • Society

• If you don't ponder the end of the world on a regular basis, I don't think you're really human.

  

  Edan Lepucki
  • World
  • Think
  • End

• Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.

  

  J. G. Ballard
  • Real
  • Fool
  • Genius

• From a linguistic point of view, you can't really take much objection to the notion that a show is a show is a show.

  

  Walter Becker China Crisis
  • You
  • View
  • Point Of View

• We must take positions. Our weakness in the West is born of the fact of so-called 'objectivity.' Objectivity does not exist - it cannot exist!... The word is a hypocrisy which is sustained by the lie that the truth stays in the middle. No, sir: Sometimes truth stays on one side only.

  

  Oriana Fallaci
  • Truth
  • Lie
  • Hypocrisy

• In 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only colour to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea. Images of Kim Il-sung are depicted in vivid colours. Rays of yellow and orange emanate from his face: he is the sun.

  

  Barbara Demick
  • World
  • Sun
  • Face

• People work so hard, and I want to keep that energy up, and you can spread that if you're the actor. But I'm also not able to turn it on and off like a faucet. A lot of what I'm called upon to play is violent or angry. When I'm messing around with the crew and making jokes, I remember, 'Oh, this is the guy I normally am.'

  

  Kevin Bacon
  • People
  • Up
  • Work

• Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Life
  • Family
  • Fathers

• From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it.

  

  Daisy Bates
  • Wonder
  • Effects
  • Responding

• One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.

  

  Franz Kafka

• I couldn't tell a story if my life depended on it. I'm the world's worst joke-teller.

  

  David Shields
  • Life
  • World