Reader Quotes by David Foster Wallace

10 Reader quotes by David Foster Wallace

All Reader quotes David Foster Wallace’s page

David Foster Wallace’s reflections on reading are presented in ten tight verses. The set may be brief, but his sharp, introspective voice is evident, giving a quick, thoughtful glimpse into his relationship with literature.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life "outside" the…

David Foster Wallace

Image

The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.

David Foster Wallace

Image

To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared about how sappy this'll…

David Foster Wallace

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

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

Image

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

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

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

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

Image

…there is an ending [to Infinite Jest] as far as I'm concerned. Certain kind of parallel lines are supposed to start converging…

David Foster Wallace

Image

More by David Foster Wallace

“I felt more solidly composed, now that I was horizontal. I was impossible to knock down.”

David Foster Wallace

Image

“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

Image

“It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological erasure.”

David Foster Wallace

Image

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

Image

“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

Image

“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

Image

“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

Image

“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

Image

“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