“The reality is that dying isn’t bad, but it takes forever. And that forever is no time at all. I know that sounds like a contradiction, or maybe just wordplay. What it really is, it turns out, is a matter of perspective.—David Foster Wallace “Good Old Neon” (2004)”

“David Foster Wallace: I always fear that when I really impose my will on something, the universe is gonna punish me.”

“He [David Foster Wallace] compares raising children to raising books, you should take pride in the work you do inside a family and not from how they make out in the world. “It’s good to want a child to do well, but it’s bad to want that glory to reflect back on you,” is what he says.”

“David Foster Wallace: There’s so much beauty and profundity in all kinds of shitty pop culture all around us.”

“Mr. Franzen said he and Mr. Wallace, over years of letters and conversations about the ethical role of the novelist, had come to the joint conclusion that the purpose of writing fiction was “a way out of loneliness.”(NY Times article on the memorial service of David Foster Wallace.) ”

“David Foster Wallace: We sit around and bitch about how TV has ruined the audience for reading—when really all it’s done is given us the really precious gift of making our job harder.”