David Shields Quotes
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The individual has now risen to the level of a mini-government or mini-corporation. Via YouTube and Twitter, each of us is our own mini-network.
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I try to be as honest as I possibly can about the contradictions within my own heart and thereby get to something 'true' and revealing and important about contemporary American culture and human nature.
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I'm trying to use myself and my own flawedness as a metaphor for general human experience. I'm trying to 'stand next to' a subject, whether it's Bobby Knight or Vince Carter, and use that subject to meditate on both him and me.
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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.
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We judge athletes as if we all don't have trouble performing our various duties from time to time.
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The only requirement of a fan or a patient is the surrender to authority.
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I began as a fiction writer - I had written three novels in my 20s and 30s. But as my work has gravitated towards literary nonfiction, or lyric essay or poetic essay, whatever you want to call it, I'm constantly beating my head against the wall 'cause I'm teaching a genre that's no longer that exciting to me and that I'm no longer practicing.
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I felt like I was definitely seeing something - the falsely gorgeous images of war, painted, almost invariably, in 'Times' combat photos.
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I like some of Annie Proulx, some of those very brief stories of hers. And I love J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello. I like Geoff Dyer. I also liked W. G. Sebald, especially his book 'The Emigrants'.
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The American writer has his hands full, trying to understand and then describe and then make credible much of American reality.
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I disagree with everything John Updike has ever said.
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Your basic, well-made novel by Ian McEwan or Jonathan Franzen just bores me silly.
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The only rule is never be bored.
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Sports movies are often very good at dramatizing the intersection of public and private realms: the body politic.