Although Of Course In The End You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky, r. Aug. 2015

All quotes are by David Foster Wallace unless noted

p. 3 As if how good a writer you are and how good a teacher you are have anything to do with each other. I don't think so. I know too many really good writers who are shitty teachers, and vice versa, to think that. I think that the teaching... well, the teaching has helped my own writing a lot...

p. 16 ...somebody who's writing, has part of their motivation to sort of I think impress themselves and their consciousness on others. There's an unbelievable arrogance about even trying to write something - much less, you know, expecting that someone else will pay money to read it.

p. 36 My tastes in reading lately have been way more realistic, because most experimental stuff is hellaciously unfun to read.

p. 41 ...if the writer does his job right, what he basically does in remind the reader of how smart the reader's been aware of all the time. And it's not a question of the writer having more capacity than the average person. It's that the writer is willing I think to cut off, cut himself off from certain stuff, and develop... and just, and think really hard. Which not everybody has the luxury to do.

p. 69 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.

p. 85 The problem is [TV]'s also very empty. Because one of the differences about having a real person there is that number one, I've gotta do some work. Like, he pays attention to me, I gotta pay attention to him. You know: I watch him, he watches me. The stress level goes up. But there's also, there's something nourishing about it, because I think like as creatures, we've all got to figure out how to be together in the same room. And so TV is like candy in that it's more pleasurable and easier than the real food. But it also doesn't have any of the nourishment of real food.

p. 180 Well, then I can tell you, from authoritative firsthand experience that there's nothing like - there's no keen, exquisite pleasure that corresponds with the keen exquisite pain of envying somebody older. Who's written something, or won some tournament, that you particularly admire.

p. 199 Because the predictability in popular art, the really formulaic stuff, the stuff that makes no attempt to surprise or do anything artistic, is so profoundly soothing. And it even, even the densest or most tired viewer can see what's coming. And it gives you a sense of order, that everything's going to be all right, that this is a narrative that will take care of you, and won't in any way challenge you.

p. 203 I mean that's probably ultimately why novels and movies have it over short stories, as on art form. Is that if the heart of the short story is dishonest, there aren't enough of the little flashes to keep you going. Whereas in a novel or a movie, even if the central project doesn't work, there are often ten or fifteen great, great, great things.

p. 266 [On his landscape (outside Bloomington), the long fields] When the wind blows, you can see ripples, it's like water. It's like the ocean, except it's really green. I mean, it really is. Not so much here. But you get another mile south, where it's nothing but serious full-time farmland and farmhouses? Sort of calm, real pretty.

p. 290 Today's person spends way more time in front of screens. In fluorescent-lit rooms, in cubicles, being on one end or the other of an electronic data transfer. And what is it to be human and alive and exercise you humanity in that kind of exchange? Versus fifty years ago, when the big thing was, I don't know that, havin' a house and a garden and driving ten miles to your light industrial job. And livin' and dyin' in the same town that you're in, and knowing what other towns looked like only from photographs and the occasional movie reel. I mean, there's just so much that seems different, and the speed with which it gets different is just...

p. 291 I think the reason why people behave in an ugly manner is that it's really scary to be alive and to be human, and people are really really afraid.

p. 294 Nice to have your borders redefined, though, by physical contact with another person... I'm not just a set of anxieties and ambitions. I'm a person confined to a limited range, realize your head is only a half-foot-long space, etc.   - David Lipsky on physical relations with your significant other

p. 307 It's good to want a child to do well, but it's bad to want that glory to reflect back on you.