You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the deep emotional commitment an artist may feel to engage and move their audience.
In this quote, David Foster Wallace expresses the intense passion and vulnerability that can accompany the act of writing. He suggests that a writer must be willing to risk their own emotional safety, akin to 'dying' in a metaphorical sense, in order to genuinely connect with and affect their readers. This sentiment encapsulates the struggle artists face when balancing authenticity and the fear of judgment.
Themes
ArtEmotionWritingVulnerabilityConnection
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary workshop, one might use this quote to highlight the emotional depth needed in creative writing.
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.
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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
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