You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn't enough to make him great. If it were, Judith Krantz and John Grisham would be great fiction writers, and by any but the most commercial standards they're not even very good.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that storytelling ability alone does not define greatness in literature.
David Foster Wallace critiques the notion that the ability to tell an engaging story is sufficient for literary greatness. He argues that true greatness in literature involves complexity, depth, and insight that transcends mere entertainment value, distinguishing accomplished writers like Dostoevsky from more commercial authors who may not achieve the same artistic merit.
Themes
LiteratureStorytellingGreatnessArtistic MeritDepth
In practice
Example use cases
In a book club discussion, one might use this quote to express why some authors are revered beyond their entertaining plots.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes →Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
David Foster WallaceRead
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
David Foster WallaceRead
Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
David Foster WallaceRead
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
David Foster WallaceRead
Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
David Foster WallaceRead
Similar quotes
Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair
Stephen KingRead
The love of literature, of language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print—the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly.
John Edward WilliamsRead
Reduced... to a crude formula, the Russian tragedy is precisely the tragedy of a society in which literature turned out to be the prerogative of the minority.
Joseph BrodskyRead
Novelists, it seems to me, are the very last people who should be asked to comment on the news of the day, and sooner or later, when they have been pilloried for their views, most of them recognise this.
Hilary MantelRead
Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
Carlos FuentesRead
Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead