A biography for David Shieldshasn’t been written yet.
“The originating sin of America is slavery, for which reparations should be paid and will never be paid; as a result, mini-reparations are paid daily, and the NBA remains, for me, reparations theater.”
“I don't know what's the matter with me, why I'm so adept at distance, why I feel so remote from things, why life feels like a rumor.”
“Straightforward fiction functions only as more Bubble Wrap, nostalgia, retreat.”
“I like having a paperback original. And until literature catches up with the culture - the violence, language, syntax, compression, concision, complexity and diversity that the Internet offers - books still make sense.”
“Nothing really changes: the individual's ability to project his message or throw his weight around remains minuscule.”
“We like non-fiction because we live in fictitious times.”
“Your art is most alive and dangerous when you use it against yourself. That's why I pick at my scabs.”
“A book makes claims of literary art.”
“Both of my parents were journalists, and my rebellion, such as it was, was to become a fiction writer.”
“Are black people conscious of how excruciatingly self-conscious white people have become in their every interaction with black people? Is this self-consciousness an improvement? Maybe not, because I'm thinking of people in categories rather than as people, which is a famously dangerous thing to do.”
“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 backstroke in the slow lane - but when I took a two-week break from swimming I was surprised how much I missed it.”
“Considering the relatively brief careers of professional athletes, teenagers who are good enough to play at the highest level should be able to exploit that market.”
“Seattle's not a particularly Jewish city, and I'm not in any way religious. Since I've been here, I've been a fairly productive, even obsessively productive, writer.”
“I couldn't tell a story if my life depended on it. I'm the world's worst joke-teller.”
“The trajectory of nearly all technology follows this downward and widening path: by the time a regular person is able to create his own TV network, it doesn't matter anymore that I have or am on a network.”
“Your basic, well-made novel by Ian McEwan or Jonathan Franzen just bores me silly.”
“Sports movies are often very good at dramatizing the intersection of public and private realms: the body politic.”
“All art is theft.”
“The real impulse of most books is to tell a story to keep the reader lashed to the page. I don't get why that's a proper use of an adult's time.”
“Every quality I despise in George Bush is a quality I despise in myself. He is my worst self realized.”