“Books are a social substitute; you read people who, at one level, you'd like to hang out with. [David Foster Wallace]'s writing self--it's most pronounced in his essays--was the best friend you'd ever have, spotting everything, whispering jokes, sweeping you past what was irritating or boring or awful in humane style.”

“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.”

“And I think that the ultimate way you and I get lucky is if you have some success early in life, you get to find out early it doesn't mean anything. Which means you get to start early the work of figuring out what does mean something -- David Foster Wallace”

“David Lipsky: Why aren't you married at thirty-four?David Foster Wallace: You first.David Lipsky: Um-I think it's hard to fill that role...to cast it and to fill it when you know it's for thirty or forty years...someone who, whatever mental landscape you're in, they're going to be in it too, you need someone who'll fit any landscape you can imagine.”

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

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

“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.”