« All Writing Quotes · David Foster Wallace's Page
Writing Quotes by David Foster Wallace
- We will, of course, without hesitation use art to parody, ridicule, debunk, or criticize ideologies.
- One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner either.
- God, what a ghastly enterprise to be in, though-and what an odd way to achieve success. I'm an exhibitionist who wants to hide, but is…
- When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information…
- Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or…
- Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn't enough to make him great. If it were, Judith Krantz and John Grisham…
- Some words have to be explicitly uttered, Lenore. Only by actually uttering certain words does one really DO what one SAYS. 'Love' is one of…
- You have a great deal of yourself on the line, writing- your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky thing about fiction writing; a…
- Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about…
- No one can call themselves a writer until he or she has written at least fifty stories.
- You don't have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness ... has to do with angst about death,…
- Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or present yourself in…
- The fun of reading as "an exchange between consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff we can't normally talk…
- Good writing isn’t a science. It’s an art, and the horizon is infinite. You can always get better.
- Most of the writers I know are weird hybrids. There's a strong streak of egomania coupled with extreme shyness. Writing's kind of like exhibitionism in…
- In the broadest possible sense, writing well means to communicate clearly and interestingly and in a way that feels alive to the reader. Where there’s…
- I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.
- The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight…
- Literary fiction and poetry are real marginalized right now. There's a fallacy that some of my friends sometimes fall into, the ol' "The audience is…
- There are very few innocent sentences in writing.
- 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…
- Writing fiction takes me out of time. I sit down and the clock will not exist for me for a few hours. That’s probably as…
- A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane.
- Like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist', i.e., somebody whose adult job was original and…
More Writing Quotes
- Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. — Hannah Arendt
- Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn't write, I would stop breathing. — Paul Auster
- I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was… — Paul Auster
- I write the paragraph, then I'm crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then… — Paul Auster
- When we were making the law, when we were writing the literature and the mathematics the grandfarthers of Blair and little Bush… — Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
- A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit. — Richard Bach
- In every song I write, whether it's a love song or a political song or a song about family, the one thing… — Billie Joe Armstrong
- I grew up in a working-class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know. — Andrea Arnold
- Writing comes more easily if you have something to say. — Sholem Asch
- Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core… — Isaac Asimov
- If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. — Isaac Asimov
- Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not. — Isaac Asimov