Art Quotes by David Foster Wallace

Entertainment provides relief. Art provokes engagement.

— David Foster Wallace

“Show me somebody who really knows what irony means and I’ll show you a bullshit artist.”

— David Foster Wallace

“I am about art here, not simple reproduction.”

— David Foster Wallace

I just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art.

— David Foster Wallace

Ideally, each piece of art's its own unique object, and its evaluation's always present-tense.

— David Foster Wallace

“The Moms revealed that if you're not crazy then speaking to someone who isn't there is termed apostrophe and is valid art.”

— David Foster Wallace

Lucky people develop a relationship with a certain kind of art that becomes spiritual, almost religious, and doesn’t mean, you know, church…

— David Foster Wallace

The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and…

— David Foster Wallace

“We will, of course, without hesitation use art to parody, ridicule, debunk, or criticize ideologies--but this is very different.”

— David Foster Wallace

“I think serious art is supposed to make us confront things that are difficult in ourselves and in the world.”

— David Foster Wallace

I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that…

— David Foster Wallace

We will, of course, without hesitation use art to parody, ridicule, debunk, or criticize ideologies.

— David Foster Wallace

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

In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of…

— David Foster Wallace

“The really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get at a [liberal arts college] isn't really about the capacity to…

— David Foster Wallace

“What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves. They've got their own vision, their own way of…

— David Foster Wallace

“And I submit that this is what the real, no-shit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: How…

— David Foster Wallace

“It may be that mathematics is not generally recognized as one of the arts precisely because so much pyramidal training and practice…

— David Foster Wallace

What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves, they've got their own vision, they have their own…

— David Foster Wallace

“A big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in…

— David Foster Wallace

An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because…

— David Foster Wallace

“I have this -- here’s this thing where it’s going to sound sappy to you. I have this unbelievably like five-year-old’s belief…

— david foster wallace

“I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a…

— David Foster Wallace

“I'm not saying I'm able to work consistently out of the premise, but it seems like the big distinction between good art…

— David Foster Wallace

“...TV and popular film and most kinds of 'low' art-- which just means art whose primary aim is to make money-- is…

— David Foster Wallace

“I’ve gotten convinced that there’s something kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This thing doesn’t have that much to…

— David Foster Wallace

“Part of the reason I actually preferred Twin Peaks's second season to its first was the fascinating spectacle of watching a narrative…

— David Foster Wallace

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

“You want your art to be hip and seem cool to people, but a great deal of what passes for hip or…

— David Foster Wallace

“It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It’s…

— David Foster Wallace

“It's of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It's…

— David Foster Wallace

“It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millenial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It’s…

— David Foster Wallace

“It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It’s…

— David Foster Wallace

“Whether it honors them well or not, an essay’s fundamental obligations are supposed to be to the reader. The reader, on however…

— David Foster Wallace

“It's of some interest that the lively arts of the millenial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It's…

— David Foster Wallace

“You teach the reader that he’s way smarter than he thought he was. I think one of the insidious lessons about TV…

— David Foster Wallace

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative…

— David Foster Wallace

“Ndiawar is bent to an open drawer. 'Your new art therapy person,' he says to Yang. Yang looks Day in the eye.…

— David Foster Wallace

Good writing isn’t a science. It’s an art, and the horizon is infinite. You can always get better.

— David Foster Wallace

The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody…

— David Foster Wallace