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26 quotes by David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American author of novels, short stories and essays, as well as a professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the...
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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.

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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... →

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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.

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The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.

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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.

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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.

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It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

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It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.

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The other half is to dramatize the fact that we still 'are' human beings, now. Or can be.

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The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.

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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... →

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The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed... →

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Fiction's about what it is to be a human being.

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