“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.”

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

“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)”

“You know, just because you think bubblegum pop on the radio represents all that is wrong with society, that doesn’t mean there’s not someone out there who needs that shitty pop song. Maybe that shitty pop song makes them feel good, about themselves and the world. And as long as that shitty pop song doesn’t infringe upon your rights to rock out to, I don’t know, Subway Sect, or Siouxsie and the Banshees, or whichever old-ass band it is you worship, then who cares?”

“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.) ”