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 was trained mainly as a short story writer and that's how I started writing, but I've also become very interested in… — 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
“JAY: Why is a story more upfront than life? LENORE: It just seems more honest, somehow. JAY: Honest meaning closer to the… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn't enough to make him great. If it were, Judith Krantz… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
And meteorologists have nothing to tell people in Philo, who know perfectly well that the real story is that to the west,… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough,… — 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
Kafka's evocations are, rather, unconscious and almost sub-archetypal, the little-kid stuff from which myths derive; this is why we tend to call… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communication-theorists sometimes called "exformation," which is a… — 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
![“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/quotes/img-quotes/8fa/david-foster-wallace-161_about-yourself_this-story-the-depressed-person-was-the_2572995.jpg)
