In 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 WallaceI cannot say what color Lenore Beadsmanโs eyes are; I cannot look at them; they are the sun to me.
David Foster WallaceYou get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
David Foster WallaceI was never the sort of child who believed in "monsters under the bed" or vampires, or who needed a night-light in his bedroom; on the contrary, my father...once laughingly told my mother that he thought I might suffer from a type of benign psychosis called "antiparanoia," in which I seemed to believe that I was the object of an intricate universal conspiracy to make me so happy I could hardly stand it.
David Foster WallaceQuentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off; David Lynch is interested in the ear.
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