Art Quote by David Shields

“The beauty of reality-based art - art underwritten by reality hunger - is that it's perfectly situated between life itself and (unattainable) "life as art".” quote by David Shields — Download Open 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 art".”

David Shields

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Art Beauty Hunger Life Life itself Literature Poetry Reality Unattainable

More by David Shields

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

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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

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People like Ian McEwan and Jonathan Franzen completely bore me.

David Shields

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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

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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

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Your art is most alive and dangerous when you use it against yourself. That's why I pick at my scabs.

David Shields

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Everything I write, I believe instinctively, is to some extent collage. Meaning, ultimately, is a matter of adjacent data.

David Shields

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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

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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

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“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

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The novel is dead. Long live the antinovel, built from scraps.

David Shields

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I am exhausted by traditional memoir. I am exhausted by the architecture of the conventional novel.

David Shields

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Explore all 77 David Shields quotes

More Art quotes

True works of art contain their own theory and give us the measurement according to which we should judge them.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Before Noah, men having only water to drink, could not find the truth. Accordingly...they became abominably wicked, and they were justly exterminated by the water they loved to drink. This good man, Noah, having seen that all his contemporaries had perished by this unpleasant drink, took a dislike to it; and God, to relieve his dryness, created the vine and…

Benjamin Franklin

“Hear the sum of the whole matter in the compass of one brief word — every art possessed by man comes from Prometheus.”

Aeschylus

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I think most artists feel like they're outside society - no matter how many accolades they receive, or how much money is in your…

Aaron Rose

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The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.

Erich Fromm

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That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.

Ray Bradbury

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“So, really," continued Jacob as if this were perfectly normal to expound on art in these circumstances, "when you think about it, the artists who make people stop and think, who push the form, who make you uncomfortable, who are laughable, well, they're the ones who get remembered." Idly, Jacob dug a hole in the snow with his shovel and…

Justina Chen Headley