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
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
“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
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
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
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
“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
“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
“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
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
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
“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
“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
