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 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
The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush. — 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
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
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
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 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
....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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
“I felt more solidly composed, now that I was horizontal. I was impossible to knock down.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
“It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological erasure.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
“Why is the truth usually not just un- but anti-interesting?” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
![“[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/quotes/img-quotes/6b0/david-foster-wallace-161_books_i-f-the-writer-does-his-job-right-what-h_745056.jpg)
![“....there is an ending [to Infinite Jest] as far as I'm concerned. Certain kind of parallel lines are supposed to start converging in such a way that an "end" can be projected by the reader somewhere beyond the right frame. If no such convergence or projection occured to you, then the book's failed…” quote by David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ec1/david-foster-wallace-161_book_there-is-an-ending-to-infinite-jest-as-f_3084860.jpg)
