A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
No one can call themselves a writer until he or she has written at least fifty stories. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
I don't think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist', i.e., somebody whose adult job… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
[I]f the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“Formal writing does not mean gratuitously fancy writing; it means clear, clean, maximally considerate writing.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
God, what a ghastly enterprise to be in, though-and what an odd way to achieve success. I'm an exhibitionist who wants to… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
I wasn't all that attracted to writing originally. I read a great deal. My parents read a great deal. I do know… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
In the broadest possible sense, writing well means to communicate clearly and interestingly and in a way that feels alive to the… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“But I gotta tell you, I just think to look across this room and automatically assume that somebody else is less aware… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Most of the writers I know are weird hybrids. There's a strong streak of egomania coupled with extreme shyness. Writing's kind of… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
If you're writing fiction, you're dealing with characters who, themselves, will have heartfelt sentiments but who, themselves, live in this culture right… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“But what of Lenore, of Lenore’s hair? Here is hair that is clearly within and of itself every color—blond and red and… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
If you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“If you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“Workshop Hermeticism, fiction for which the highest praise involves the words 'competent,' 'finished,' 'problem-free,' fiction over which Writing-Program pre- and proscriptions loom… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
There's a certain kind of neurological makeup that goes along with being a writer, and having been in the room with a… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Literary fiction and poetry are real marginalized right now. There's a fallacy that some of my friends sometimes fall into, the ol'… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“Um um um um um. This business of—this business about marketing yourself, there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless we’re allowed to think… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression.… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“Even as I wrote my note to Fern, for instance, expressing sentiments and regrets that were real, a part of me was… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“This is apparently a little promotional ¶ where we’re supposed to explain “how and why we came to” the subject of our… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“In sum, then a conservative tech writer offers a really attractive way of looking at viewer passivity and TV's institutionalization of irony,… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“But the truth is it’s hard for me to know what I really think about any of the stuff I’ve written. It’s… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“Under fun’s new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don’t want… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“Interviewer ...In the case of "American Psycho" I felt there was something more than just this desire to inflict pain--or that Ellis… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“But when you talk about Nabokov and Coover, you’re talking about real geniuses, the writers who weathered real shock and invented this… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“Maybe it’s not metaphysics. Maybe it’s existential. I’m talking about the individual US citizen’s deep fear, the same basic fear that you… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Writing fiction takes me out of time. I sit down and the clock will not exist for me for a few hours.… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Good writing isn’t a science. It’s an art, and the horizon is infinite. You can always get better. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
The fun of reading as "an exchange between consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff we… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“I felt more solidly composed, now that I was horizontal. I was impossible to knock down.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
“We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
“It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological erasure.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
Footnote: 79) The anchor is gigantic and must weigh a hundred tons, and -- delightfully -- it really is anchor-shaped, i.e. the same shape… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
“The paradoxical intercourse of audience and celebrity. The suppressed awareness that the whole reason ordinary people found celebrity fascinating was that they were not,… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
“I am coming to see that the sensation of the worst nightmares, a sensation that can be felt asleep or awake, is identical to… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
“He cranks the condo’s AC way down at night and still most mornings wakes up soaked, fetally curled, entombed in that kind of psychic… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
“To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
“If you’re subjected to enough great salesmen and salespitches and marketing concepts for long enough—like from your earliest Saturday-morning cartoons, let’s say—it is only… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
“She almost reminds the engineer of certain types in high school whom everyone adored because you sensed it made no difference to them whether… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
To be, in a word, unborable… It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
“It is within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
![“[I]f the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is.” quote by David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/6b0/david-foster-wallace-161_books_i-f-the-writer-does-his-job-right-what-h_745056.jpg)
![“This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression. The character has traits of myself. I really lost friends while writing on that story, I became ugly and unhappy and just yelled at people. The cruel thing with…” quote by David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/8fa/david-foster-wallace-161_about-yourself_this-story-the-depressed-person-was-the_2572995.jpg)
