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 felt like I was definitely seeing something - the falsely gorgeous images of war, painted, almost invariably, in 'Times' combat photos.
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The reigning mythology of the Northwest is obviously nature, and the reigning mythology of the Northeast corridor is culture.
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I'm a sucker for sports movies.
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The only requirement of a fan or a patient is the surrender to authority.
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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 am interested in work that jumps boundaries, and that makes trouble. Part of me is comfortable with that: with being a bit of a troublemaker.
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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 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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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 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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Sports movies are often very good at dramatizing the intersection of public and private realms: the body politic.
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The only rule is never be bored.