Movies love to imply that the man and woman held each other all night long, but you can’t do it. You have to roll away.
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David Shields
For the American ice hockey defenceman, see David Shields (ice hockey) David Shields (born July 22, 1956) is an American author of fiction and nonfiction. 2Life and work David Shields was born in Los Angeles in 1956. He graduated from Brown University in 1978 with a degree in English Literature. In 1980, he received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the University of Iowa. From 1985 to 1988, he was visiting assistant professor at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. Shields is Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington. He is also a member of the faculty in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. His work has been translated into twenty languages. Shields's first novel, Heroes, was published in 198
The Greek word eros denotes 'want,' 'lack,' 'desire for that which is missing.' The lover wants what he doesn’t have.
We are all so afraid. We are all so alone. We all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.
In college, reading all those Greek tragedies and listening to the lectures about them, I would think, rather blithely, 'Well, that tragic flaw thing is nicely symmetrical: whatever makes Oedipus heroic is also—' What did I know then? Nothing. I didn’t feel in my bones as I do now that what powers…
A voice from the burning bush commanded Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, but Moses was ‘slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.’ When the time came to inform the Israelites of God’s command, Moses’ brother, Aaron, ‘spake all the words that the Lord had spoken unto Moses.’ I always imagine Moses…
The rich will always be rich, the poor will always be poor, but the middle-class is always in motion, is always in a state of suspended transformation, is not necessarily tomorrow what it is today.
The opposite of success is suicide.
Each of us isn’t the sum total of all the faults of his family. That’s impossible. That can’t be who we are.
Why would someone for whom talking was torture want to talk all the time before thousands of Athenians? Because otherwise he’d have drowned himself at high tide. My sister—so shy, so sincere—once wanted to be an actress. The best jazz drummer I’ve ever heard had only one arm. We all choose a calling…
The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.
The world is real; the suffering of others is real; one's actions can sometimes irrevocably determine the destiny of others; the mistakes one makes are often transmuted directly into others' pain; there is sometimes no way to undo that pain-the dead remain dead, the maimed are forever maimed, and…
No matter what we say, the end of all sadness is a swoon into divinity.
When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful.