David Foster Wallace

This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.

For these cultures, getting rid of the pain without addressing the deeper cause would be like shutting off a fire alarm while the fire's still going.

We're kind of wishing some parents would come back. And of course we're uneasy about the fact that we wish they'd come back - I mean, what's wrong with us?

The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates.

Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride.

TV's 'real' agenda is to be 'liked,' because if you like what you're seeing, you'll stay tuned. TV is completely unabashed about this; it's its sole raison.

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life 'outside' the story changes the story.

The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se.

I just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art.