The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home.
David Foster WallaceIn the broadest possible sense, writing well means to communicate clearly and interestingly and in a way that feels alive to the reader. Where thereโs some kind of relationship between the writer and the reader - even though itโs mediated by a kind of text - thereโs an electricity about it.
David Foster WallaceWriting fiction takes me out of time. I sit down and the clock will not exist for me for a few hours. Thatโs probably as close to immortal as weโll ever get.
David Foster Wallacethe psychological need to believe that others take you as seriously as you take yourself. There is nothing particularly wrong with it, as psychological needs go, but yet of course we should always remember that a deep need for anything from other people makes us easy pickings.
David Foster WallaceDostoevsky wrote fiction about identity, moral value, death, will, sexual vs. spiritual love, greed, freedom, obsession, reason, faith, suicide. And he did it without ever reducing his characters to mouthpieces or his books to tracts. His concern was always what it is to be a human beingโthat is, how to be an actual *person*, someone whose life is informed by values and principles, instead of just an especially shrewd kind of self-preserving animal.
David Foster Wallace