David Foster Wallace Quote by David Foster Wallace

Mr. Franzen said he and Mr. Wallace, over years of letters and conversations about the ethical role of the novelist, had come to the…

— Jonathan Franzen

Writers such as Richard Powers and the late David Foster Wallace have shown the path to a newer generation of writers for whom all…

— Giles Foden

I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say that I've read very little of David Foster Wallace's work. It's a huge gap in my education, one…

— Ben Fountain

“David Foster Wallace: What writers have is a license and also the freedom to sit—to sit, clench their fists, and make themselves be excruciatingly…

— David Lipsky

“IT’S HARDLY a coincidence that “Shipping Out,” Wallace’s most well-known essay, appeared only a month before Infinite Jest, his most well-known novel, was published.…

— David Shields

David Foster Wallace is a big idol of mine. His writing is so clear that for years I'd read him and think, My God,…

— Damian Kulash

Every genuinely literary style, from the high authorial voice to Foster Wallace and his footnotes-within-footnotes, requires the reader to see the world from somewhere…

— Zadie Smith

“The job of a fiction writer is to engage the reader and rip them from reality.”

— Tom Wiseman

“Writing fiction is a way of expressing feelings and revealing a certain truth about life, goals, dreams and desires.”

— Ann Marie Aguilar

“I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's…

— Flannery O'Connor

“I craved a form of naive realism. I paid special attention, I craned my readerly neck whenever a London street I knew was mentioned,…

— Ian McEwan

“Was the dividing line between life and fiction as hazy for other people as it was for a writer?”

— Dean Koontz