A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it. — David Shields Copy Share Image
I hope readers will think that 'The Thing About Life' is beautifully patterned, a tapestry. — David Shields Copy Share Image
The novel is an artifact, which is why antiquarians cling to it so fervently. — David Shields Copy Share Image
I am exhausted by traditional memoir. I am exhausted by the architecture of the conventional novel. — David Shields Copy Share Image
With relatively few exceptions, the novel sacrifices too much, for me, on the altar of plot. — David Shields Copy Share Image
The absence of plot leaves the reader room to think about other things. — David Shields Copy Share Image
“Samuel Johnson: A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it .” — David Shields Copy Share Image
The real impulse of most books is to tell a story to keep the reader lashed to the page. I don't get… — David Shields Copy Share Image
If I'm reading a book and it seems truly interesting, I tend to start reading back to front in order not to… — David Shields Copy Share Image
“593 Still (very still), at the heart of “literary culture” is the big, blockbuster novel by middle-of-the-road writers, the run-of-the-mill four-hundred-page page-turner.… — David Shields Copy Share Image
I take literature as a really serious human activity. It's not just a playful thing. It can be hilarious and wonderful and… — David Shields Copy Share Image
What I'm definitely against is the plodding, paint-by-numbers 19th-century-style novel that's still being written today. I just don't understand why you'd read… — David Shields Copy Share Image
Gerald Jonas's book about stuttering is called 'The Disorder of Many Theories.' Back theory seems to suffer from the same 'Rashomon' effect:… — David Shields Copy Share Image
The key thing for an intellectually rigorous writer to come to grips with is the marginalization of literature by more technologically sophisticated… — David Shields Copy Share Image
“A great book allows me to leap over that wall: in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness, I feel human and… — David Shields Copy Share Image
To be honest, there are parts of 'How Literature Saved My Life' that began as interviews. Someone was telling me that they… — David Shields Copy Share Image
Art, like science, progresses, and to me it's bizarre that a lot of acclaimed and popular and respectable books are not advancing… — David Shields Copy Share Image
I like some of Annie Proulx, some of those very brief stories of hers. And I love J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello.… — David Shields Copy Share Image
The essential gesture of the contemporary novel is to get people to turn the page, to entertain them, and I hate that.… — David Shields Copy Share Image
To be honest, there are parts of 'How Literature Saved My Life' that began as interviews. Someone was telling me that they think the… — David Shields Copy Share Image
I'm very drawn to the way in which a life lived can be an art of sorts or a failed art, and a life-lived-told… — David Shields Copy Share Image
You're one of 6.5 billion people now on the planet, and 99.9 percent of your genes are the same as everyone else's. — David Shields Copy Share Image
We're completely confused about the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. To me, the moment you compose, you're fictionalising; the moment you remember, you're dreaming.… — David Shields Copy Share Image
Your art is most alive and dangerous when you use it against yourself. That's why I pick at my scabs. — David Shields Copy Share Image
Everything I write, I believe instinctively, is to some extent collage. Meaning, ultimately, is a matter of adjacent data. — David Shields Copy Share Image
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… — David Shields Copy Share Image
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… — David Shields Copy Share Image
The beauty of reality-based art - art underwritten by reality hunger - is that it's perfectly situated between life itself and (unattainable) "life as… — David Shields Copy Share Image
“A great book allows me to leap over that wall: in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness, I feel human and unalone.” — David Shields Copy Share Image
