You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
Look, man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote questions the value of fiction that solely highlights negativity in the world.
In this quote, David Foster Wallace critiques the tendency of contemporary fiction to merely reflect the bleakness and absurdity of modern life. He suggests that while it is important to acknowledge the darker aspects of reality, literature should also offer more than just a representation of despair; it should inspire thought, reflection, and perhaps even hope amid the chaos.
Themes
FictionNegativityDarknessHopeLiterature
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the purpose of literature in society during a book club.
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.
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It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
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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.
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Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
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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
I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book - in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention.
Jennifer WeinerRead
I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.
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Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.
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...in other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama Interview - March 1964
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Comerado, this is no book,Who touches this, touches a man,(Is it night? Are we here alone?)It is I you hold, and who holds you,I spring from the pages into your arms-decease calls me forth.
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Belief in one's identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one's immortality... and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.
Dan SimmonsRead