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I think of sports writers as mediating between two worlds. Athletes probably think of sports writers as not macho enough. And people in high culture probably think of sports writers as jocks or something. They are in an interestingly complex position in which they have to mediate the world of body and the world of words.
David Shields -
Honesty is the best policy; the only way out is deeper in: a candid confrontation with existence is dizzying, liberating.
David Shields
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We like non-fiction because we live in fictitious times.
David Shields -
Your art is most alive and dangerous when you use it against yourself. That's why I pick at my scabs.
David Shields -
In the summer of 1956, my mother was pregnant with me, which caused my father to confess his fear that I was going to be too much of a burden for him because he had a history of depression.
David Shields -
I've always liked this idea that writing should comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable to create trouble. The value of a work of art can be measured by the harm spoken of it. If you're not feeling that, then absolutely, why bother?
David Shields -
I'm really drawn toward work that is trying to capture what it's like to think now and to live now.
David Shields -
All human beings have bodies. All bodies are mortal. Yours, too, is one of these bodies.
David Shields
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When you're in New York City or Boston or something, you feel surrounded by cities and by culture.
David Shields -
Swimming is by far the best tonic I've found for my back. I'm not a good swimmer - I do the breaststroke or elementary backstroke in the slow lane - but when I took a two-week break from swimming I was surprised how much I missed it.
David Shields -
I used to feel that everything I know I learned through my lifelong struggle with stuttering; I now feel this way about my damn back.
David Shields -
I am exhausted by traditional memoir. I am exhausted by the architecture of the conventional novel.
David Shields -
In a way, it's taken me 25 years to acknowledge that I am from the West Coast. I was always sort of pretending I was bicoastal or that I really belonged on the East Coast.
David Shields -
I'm obviously aware that most people don't agree with me, that people like to escape into a coherent world that is apart from their own.
David Shields
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You, Dad, in the large scheme of things, don't matter. I, Dad, don't matter. We're vectors on the grids of cellular life.
David Shields -
I believe in copyright, within limited precincts. But I also believe in fair use, public domain, and especially transformation.
David Shields -
I like having a paperback original. And until literature catches up with the culture - the violence, language, syntax, compression, concision, complexity and diversity that the Internet offers - books still make sense.
David Shields -
I'm not super-polite or civil - I try to be civil, but I'm not into Seattle's niceties, and I'm not hugely wired into Seattle's natural beauty.
David Shields -
I suspect the real reason the N.F.L. and N.B.A. don't want high schoolers and college underclassmen to play with their ball is that they don't want to jeopardize their relationship with National Collegiate Athletic Association, which serves as a sort of free minor league and unpaid promotional department for the pros.
David Shields -
Seattle is still more Caucasian than most medium-sized cities. The sort of psychosexual politics of white fandom in context of black athletes who are also both very rich and slightly angry is just, to me, bottomlessly fascinating.
David Shields
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Sports passion is deeply, infamously territorial: our city-state is better than your city-state because our city-state's team beat your city-state's team. My attachment to the Sonics is approximately the reverse of this.
David Shields -
I have a teaching job that allows me to pay the rent and affords me to, frankly, write the books I want to write.
David Shields -
During Ronald Reagan's administration, '60 Minutes' ran a segment about the difference between Reagan's rhetoric and Reagan's actions. The show thought it had produced a hard-hitting piece; Reagan's team called up '60 Minutes' to thank them for the 15-minute commercial.
David Shields -
I would hate to be that person who is, you know, the mystery writer who has to deliver a book every year to publisher X.
David Shields