David Shields Quotes

We breathe, we think, we conceive of our lives as narratives.

Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.

I really believe that 'Saw' makes us stop and think and question our motives and what we're doing here on Earth.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

How do we describe the fact of human existence? At a certain point, perhaps, style fails us. Language, even and in particular at its most evocative, becomes less of an aid and more of a difficulty.

Man is the only living being who has a developed self-awareness and death-awareness.

Every man regards his own life as the New Year's Eve of time.

A movie that's about other horror movies isn't interesting. A movie about who we are, is.

How can we live and die and never know the difference?

It's so weird to be alive and to be inside a body.

I am really curious about life, about why we are all here. I notice my skin is ageing, things are changing, I've seen people dying, so that's the train we are all on.

If you don't ponder the end of the world on a regular basis, I don't think you're really human.

Ultimately, I think, as humans, we all care deeply about our life's legacy, and contemplating our own mortality is the only real way to approach that question of legacy honestly.

All of us have life; few of us have an idea of it.

Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are - hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.

One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.

The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

If I had to summarize, most broadly, my concerns as a writer, I'd say the question 'How then must we live?' is at the heart of it, for me.

I'm just observing the world. I was born into it, like you were, and then I found out there were some really disturbing aspects to being alive, like the fact that you weren't going to be alive forever - that bothered me.

Dost thou know what life is, my child? Hast thou comprehended the action of those springs which produce existence? Hast thou examined thyself?

I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel.

If we ignore our death, we end up just going around completely oblivious to why we do the things we do!

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

What am I? Do I know? I am a man: quite simply, a 'breather.'