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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A small but brilliant advance made today by someone’s awareness may for the moment reach a very small audience, but insofar as it’s valid and beautiful, it will make its way and become part of the whole world of consciousness. So in that sense it’s all working toward this huge audience, and all working toward a better man.
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We believed that there's no such thing as good art or bad art. Art is art. If it's bad, it's something else. It was a much, much harder line in the '50s and '60s than it is now, because the idea of art education didn't exist - they didn't have a fine arts program when I was a kid.
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Scientists normally like to do experiments. You know, they like to mix this with that and see what happens. They like to take this thing and poke it and see how it reacts. In astronomy, we can't do that. The stars, the planets, the galaxies, are so far away that we just look at them, and we have to learn things by looking at them.
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Because Scientologists view children as spiritual beings, you're not treated as a kid, so you're given a lot of responsibility. Your ego becomes extremely inflated.
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If I even lose my glasses or make a mistake. I become really disappointed in myself.
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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.