David Shields Quotes
I argued strongly to the American publisher that 'Reality Hunger' should come out first. They thought that 'The Thing About Life' would have more appeal because it's on a broader topic; it's about mortality rather than art.
Quotes to Explore
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Eighty percent of my life is normal like any other mother. I worry about my children, if they're doing all right. I worry that my husband is doing well. The 20 percent is just the queen aspect that factors in. But for me, it's life as usual, and it's just taking care of my family.
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I'm not strict on my calorie count; I just pay attention to my body.
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Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.
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God manifests himself in each historical period according to the understanding of the people of the era.
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Peoples do not defy repression and death, nor do they remain for nights on end protesting energetically, just because of merely formal matters.
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In those days, even as a boy, I watched some people that I knew were living way beyond their means.
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I find the whole situation of confronting an audience terrifying.
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War has been good to me from a financial standpoint but I don't want to make money that way. I don't want blood money.
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The prevalence of mobile homes does not correspond with the prevalence of poverty, or with much of anything else. All that can be confidently said about America's mobile homes is that they are massed in places where you wouldn't want to be in one. Florida's mobile homes lie athwart the path of hurricanes. Georgia's are in the way of tornadoes.
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If I was to go to sleep before midnight, I would feel weird about myself, like I wasted a day. My most productive hours are between midnight and five.
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No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Ambrose Bierce.
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I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.
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I think that, to be an artist, you have to have a big enough ego to believe that people out in the world want to see what you think is a good idea. And if you don't have that sense of ego, then the minute that idea goes into the world, self-doubt kicks in.
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If I start thinking, 'Is this movie going to open? Is this movie going to do well?' I'm not focusing on the job. The job is to make a good movie.
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Not long ago I made a list of Doc Ford books I would like to do, and I came up with 11 pretty easily. I like to let the characters go their own ways and see what happens. I find them fascinating.
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If I could travel back in time, I'd bring back the entire Wu-Tang Clan.
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I've always wanted to tackle the casual part of dressing. Knits to me are always just easy. I've fantasized about packing a suitcase of only knits: You just throw them in, roll them in a ball, pull them out and they still look fabulous.
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It was a difficult second record. I had moments where I couldn't write; had moments where I was writing lots. It was just a massive learning process for me.
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I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.
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I hate the thought that someone had picked up one of my song records and was really excited about it, and walks [out of] a record shop with On Land and is disappointed because it isn't what they wanted. So, I try to make signs, graphically and visually, to say to people "Okay, this is this department of my work and this is this other department of my work." And of course I'm very pleased if people like all of them, but I don't want them to feel deceived at any point.
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I learned hard lessons in life; I had to because I had so much happen: My mother died my sophomore year in high school. The next year, same day, my brother dropped dead. Two years after that, I got married because my girlfriend got pregnant. The year after my wedding, my father - who I had only recently met - died.
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Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?
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I argued strongly to the American publisher that 'Reality Hunger' should come out first. They thought that 'The Thing About Life' would have more appeal because it's on a broader topic; it's about mortality rather than art.
