One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner either.
David Foster WallaceAmerican experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret.
David Foster WallaceIt feels intensely twisted to see reigning industry queen Jenna Jameson chilling out at the Vivid booth in Jordaches and a latex bustier and to know already that she has a tattoo of a sundered valentine with the tagline Heart Breaker on her right buttock and a tiny hairless ole just left of her anus.
David Foster WallaceI will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.
David Foster WallaceAnd make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I donโt really mean what Iโm saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That itโs impossible to mean what you say? That maybe itโs too bad itโs impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, todayโs irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.
David Foster Wallace