David Foster Wallace

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes.”

“This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside.”

“This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”