David Shields

From the first slave ship arriving in harbor, America stole and judged blacks. Black life that didn't fit into white logic was commercially exploited or lynched. ”

Life, in my view, is simple, tragic, and frighteningly beautiful. ”

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. ”

I still see life entirely through its Darwinian prism. I keep trying to shake off the aftereffects of writing 'The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead', and I find I can't. ”

To be honest, there are parts of 'How Literature Saved My Life' that began as interviews. Someone was telling me that they think the book sounds very phonic: that it sounds like me speaking. And I don't think it's a coincidence that there are six to ten passages that I cadged from various interviews that I did post-'Reality Hunger'. ”

So many of the things I talk about in 'Reality Hunger' seem to be the things that 'The Thing About Life' does - things like risk, contradiction, compression, mixing modes of attack from the memoristic gesture to data-crunching. ”

I hope readers will think that 'The Thing About Life' is beautifully patterned, a tapestry. ”

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 can be art as well. ”

I couldn't tell a story if my life depended on it. I'm the world's worst joke-teller. ”

That's why people read books. You get to have the real conversation, as opposed to the pseudo-conversations we have in everyday life. ”