David Foster Wallace Quotes
"The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Flaws, Irony)
"The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Loneliness)
"The other half is to dramatize the fact that we still "are" human beings, now. Or can be."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Fact, Now)
"The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do?"
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Art, Irony, Rules)
"The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: God, Eyes)
"Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Oppression, Poverty, Pride, Rap)
"This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside."
- David Foster Wallace
"This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: God, American, Cosmos, Worship)
"This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Talking, Writers)
"To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared about how sappy this'll look in print, saying this."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Now, Order, Saying)
"TV's "real" agenda is to be "liked," because if you like what you're seeing, you'll stay tuned. TV is completely unabashed about this; it's its sole raison."
- David Foster Wallace
"We're kind of wishing some parents would come back. And of course we're uneasy about the fact that we wish they'd come back - I mean, what's wrong with us?"
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Fact, Parents, Wishing, Wrong)
"What TV is extremely good at - and realize that this is "all it does" - is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: People, Numbers, Want)
"Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: End, Pleasure, Value)
"We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life "outside" the story changes the story."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Life, Idea, Sharing)
"For these cultures, getting rid of the pain without addressing the deeper cause would be like shutting off a fire alarm while the fire's still going."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Cause, Fire, Pain)
"Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Consequences, Weapons)
"It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most "familiarity" is meditated and delusive."
- David Foster Wallace
"It looks like you can write a minimalist piece without much bleeding. And you can. But not a good one."
- David Foster Wallace
"It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Art, Exercise, Trying)
"I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Art, People, Idea)
"I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Desire, Writers)
"I just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Art, Fiction, Today)
"One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Artist)
"Fiction's about what it is to be a human being."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Being, Fiction)