You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
[I]f the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that a good writer helps readers recognize their own intelligence.
David Foster Wallace highlights the role of a writer as a facilitator for readers, suggesting that the true skill of writing lies in provoking thought and reflection. When a writer does their job well, they don't just present information; instead, they stimulate the reader’s mind, allowing them to realize their own capacity for understanding and insight. This relationship fosters a deeper connection between the reader and the text, where the reader feels empowered and intellectually engaged.
In practice
This quote could be used in a writing workshop to inspire aspiring authors.
You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
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.
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
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.
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
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.
I am not conscious of working especially hard, or of 'working' at all. Writing and teaching have always been, for me, so richly rewarding that I don't think of them as work in the usual sense of the word.
It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation.
Misbehavior and punishment are not opposites that cancel each other - on the contrary they breed and reinforce each other.
Access by kids to the Internet should be like kids breathing clean air.
How it is we have so much information, but know so little?
Many college text-books, which were a weariness and stumbling-block when I studied, I have since read a little with pleasure and profit.
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