David Shields Quotes

It's no accident that my first novel was called Americana. This was a private declaration of independence, a statement of my intention to use the whole picture, the whole culture.

Future historians trying to determine what it was like to be alive in fin de millennium America should read the last two decades of O. Henry and Best American short-story collections.

I have made sense of my life by developing an ability to analyze Mainstream American Cultural Artifacts.

By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.

To write a good song, an artist has to drawn from reality. There has to be some spark from realism that communicates a real feeling to someone else. You have to be real. Or you have to be a really good storyteller.

I think that if writers don't speak about real life, it's because they don't know it.

What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible.

Interpreter of Maladies is the title of one of the stories in the book. And the phrase itself was something I thought of before I even wrote that story.

The American formula things are out there but they don't have any stories to tell - we have all the stories to tell - but they're all formula.

I've been in so many writing workshops where someone hands in a story, and when the other writers in the workshop are giving feedback, they say, 'This is unbelievable.' And the writer says, 'Well, actually, the events are based in real life. This actually happened.'

I think that James Baldwin is, for sure, one of the most important American writer/thinkers of his time... not just African-American. He singled-handedly revolutionized the political, artistic, and historical discourses about America.

Domestic realism has dominated the American marketplace for decades now. It leeches into literary fiction, and I don't think it's that rich a vein.

I enjoy films like 'American Beauty' and want to do similar films that reflect our culture.

I don't want to protect my characters. I don't do it with Muslims, either. My job is not to make us look perfect. My job is to make us look messy.

I'm not interested in making 'black' movies. I'm interested in making movies that reflect reality as I perceive it.

There's nothing political about American literature.

Acting means nothing unless it's truth. And honesty.

Film has to reflect the real world.

There's a part of me that feels like it gets really frustrating to keep working in the manner that I made the book 'Shortcomings,' where everything is pretty accurate to the real world.

Life ain't a drama. And life isn't just a comedy. Life is sometimes horrifying. Life is science-fiction. There are all elements and faculties that we navigate, so I just expect a script to reflect that. As long as it's truthful. I think genre-bending is just being honest.

When I was in high school, I remember writing a research paper, and the teacher said I should write about Langston Hughes. I felt as if I was the only black dude who didn't like Langston Hughes. He didn't seem as dark and layered as someone like Flannery O'Connor.

Denver's commitment to giving contemporary storytellers the stage is crucial to the American theater. That's something embraced by 'Smash.' We should be telling our own stories.

To ground a character in reality, you have to use shades of gray.

Even if Pearl S. Buck hadn't spent most of her life in China, she'd have every right to write about it.

'Beloved' by Toni Morrison. I think I read it first in college and have read it every few years since. The language itself is remarkable. I don't know that I've read a book that explains America so well.