David Shields Quotes

I write about true-life type things.

When I read 'Planet Terror,' it was like nothing I had ever read before remotely, and yet it has so many references.

The book has many different characteristics: some are extremely old-fashioned storytelling traits, but there are also a fair number of postmodern traits, and the self-consciousness is one.

In terms of going back and forth between fiction and nonfiction - in which I'll include memoir, biography, and true crime - is that one relieves the other.

I don't really think of my essays as being about myself. I know it sounds insane, but I just don't think of them as a memoir. They're essays; they're not an autobiography.

I got this idea of doing a really serious big work-it would be precisely like a novel, with a single difference: Every word of it would be true from beginning to end.

The architecture of a story can be a little bit different if it's a true story.

Autobiographical fiction is very tricky.

All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.

This is the best biography by me I have ever read.

If you're going to write about your life, you must write about your life.

True stories are way more interesting.

I think, unfortunately, everything is becoming about comfort, you know? A comfortable way to tell a story. The comfortable way, so that the audience will never be lost. A comfortable way to produce a film with green screens or without a lot of physical effort or losing control because of the weather or physical locations.

I don't write autobiographically.

It's what's missing, I think, from most music - the rebellious part. That rebelliousness is part of great rock music or great literature or any great creative stuff.

Autobiography should be more stringent. It should adhere more to the standards of journalism - assuming that journalism has the truth. The memoir gives you more scope, is more poetic, and allows you to play around with your own life.

Anything I write is going to be autobiographical and true to some degree.

The autobiographer works in a treacherous terrain. The journalist has a much safer job.

The easiest thing to write was 'Fever Pitch' because it was a memoir.

Christopher Hitchens's autobiography, 'Hitch 22', is a poignant read and very interesting because I have a very poor knowledge of recent political history - or, for that matter, distant political history.

I write and teach creative nonfiction. I was a reporter.

I'm influenced by Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace: writers who are often not content to just stack paragraphs and have to break out of that.

The idea of a memoir is to tell the truth. I know that often the truth hurts, but a lie hurts even more.

When you write an autobiography, it has to be authentic.

You reach a time... when fact and fiction blend seamlessly. If you do it too soon, it's journalism. If you do it too late, you forget, and it's fantasy. There's an optimum time.