55 Quotes by David Means

I love the nooks and crannies of the American landscape; the back roads and back alleys, the places that are still untouched by the corporate gloss, the veneer of sameness that seems to be spreading across the country.

You can't take a story and just stretch it out - that does not a novel make.

I find the middle classes kind of boring. The middle class has kind of been beaten like a dead horse by fictional writers. It's old news, and literature is supposed to bring new news, and for me, I feel I have to go as far out as I can to try and tell the kind of stories I want to tell.

My characters - no, make that most characters - are seeking the shelter of narrative resolution, a place of quiet and grace.

Vietnam and Iraq are part of the same national trauma and delusion; we folded the war up when Reagan became president and unpacked it with Bush.

I don't want to be a commentator of my own work. If you've written the story, you've said what you want to say.

I'm not sure if a writer should talk about themes. Themes arrive out of the deeper structure and concerns, but to me, the main thing is getting it down right, writing about specific characters in specific predicaments, and finding a way to be true to the story itself, not only in the first burst of draft but in the revision, too.

Those who see beauty almost too intensely can easily look mad to those who are functioning within the confines of so-called normal life.

I was an at-home father, taking care of them for seven years when they were babies. I was one of those new-age, at-home dads.