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David Shields

46 quotesTeacher · Born Jul 22, 1956 · American · Male

For the American ice hockey defenceman, see David Shields (ice hockey) David Shields (born July 22, 1956) is an American author of fiction and nonfiction. 2Life and work David Shields was born in Los Angeles in 1956. He graduated from Brown University in 1978 with a degree in English Literature. In 1980, he received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the University of Iowa. From 1985 to 1988, he was visiting assistant professor at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. Shields is Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington. He is also a member of the faculty in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. His work has been translated into twenty languages. Shields's first novel, Heroes, was published in 198

All Love (6)Writing (5)Identity (4)Death (3)Quotes (2)Langauge (2)Overcoming It All (1)107 Of The Greatest Single Sentences In Literature (1)Oedipus (1)real love (1)Fandom (1)Language (1)Nightmare of History (1)Perfect Sentences (1)One Message (1)

From “The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead ”

The individual doesn’t matter. 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. We carry 10 to 12 genes with mutations that are potentially lethal. These mutations are passed on to our children—you to me, me to Natalie. Aging…

Death

From “Reality Hunger”

Suddenly everyone's tale is tellable, which seems to me a good thing, even if not everyone's story turns out to be fascinating or well told.

Personal Writing Personal Essays Storytelling

The Corrections, say: I couldn't read that book if my life depended on it. It might be a 'good' novel or it might be a 'bad' novel, but something has happened to my imagination, which can no longer yield to the earnest embrace of novelistic form.

Jonathan Franzen Novels

It is indeed becoming more and more difficult, even senseless, for me to write an official English. And more and more my own language appears to me like a veil that must be torn apart in order to get at the things, or the Nothingness, behind it. Grammar and Style— to me they seem to have become as…

Writing

There was a reason the church was the main cultural unifier in Western Europe: it had the best distribution network and the most mass-produced item— the Bible.

Communications Medium The Bible The Printing Press

Here everything is admissible— philosophy, ethics, divinity, criticism, poetry, humor, fun, mimicry, anecdote, jokes, ventriloquism— all the breadth and versatility of the most liberal conversation, highest and lowest personal topics: all are permitted, and all may be combined into one speech.

Communication Speech Thought Catalog

I’m finding it harder to just ‘write.’ The seeking and sculpting of found text or sound have become my primary ‘artistic’ function. Actually generating that text or music seems increasingly difficult. Lately I’ll sit down with a blank pad and feel like I really have to dig down deep to get my own…

Commonplace Book Quotes Writing

From “Black Planet”

Sometimes what being a fan seems to be most about is self-defeat.

Fandom Sports

When I come home, flush with all this new semi-insider gossip, my wife, Laurie, startles me by saying that during the first couple of months of my sabbatical, when I was home all the time, there had been 'no energy in the house' and how grateful she is that I’m finally doing something 'purposeful'…

Gossip News

Is race on my brain, and am I screwed up? Or is it on everyone else’s brain, and am I just taking notes? No one ever acknowledges the true subject of our discussions; it can never get expressed directly, it simply can’t be, won’t be, isn’t allowed to be talked about openly, and so it comes out in a…

Race Repression

From “A Handbook for Drowning: Stories”

I would have scratched until I'd stripped away all of her skin, peeled off layers of dermis and epidermis and sebaceous glands, picked away at the backbone and spine, I would have played around with the vertebrae had not Nina said, 'Softer, you're hurting me.'

Core Love Going Closer

From “ Reality Hunger”

Let us hope the time will come when language is most efficiently used where it is being most efficiently misused. As we cannot eliminate language all at once, we should at least leave nothing undone that might contribute to its falling into disrepute. To bore one hole after another in it, until what…

Langauge Conceptual Cores Writing My Philosophy

Collage, the art of reassembling fragments of preexisting images in such a way as to form a new image, was the most important innovation in the art of the twentieth century.

Collage Remix Progress

You believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality. That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality (judiciously, as you will), we’ll act again, creating other…

History Too Fast Reality Moves Never Static Against Objectivity

From “How Literature Saved My Life”

Here, right now, this is gorgeous. Please let’s keep it so. As soon as I think/say this, I’ve ruined paradise.

The Moment Passes Paradise Lost Lost When Found

Most novelists have only one story to tell and that, in book after book, they ring endless changes on a single essential narrative.

One Message I'll Try Again And Again Finding The Right Words Same Story Only One Story

There is no wisdom, only many wisdoms— beautiful and delusional.

Polytheism Logic Against Logic Scientific Perspectivism

Write yourself naked, from exile, and in blood.

Writing Writing Strategies Writing with Blood

The purpose of art is to transfer feeling from one person’s heart to another person’s heart.

Purpose of Art Art My Heart To Your Heart IWroteThis4You 107 Of The Greatest Single Sentences In Literature

In life, in love, otherness is sexy but unbridgeable.

The Unbridgeable Love Sex Longing

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