David foster wallace

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.

It looks like you can write a minimalist piece without much bleeding. And you can. But not a good one.

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.

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

I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art.

The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.

The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, 'then' what do we do?

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.

What TV is extremely good at - and realize that this is 'all it does' - is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it.

Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes.