David Lipsky Quotes & Sayings

The point of books was to combat loneliness — David Lipsky

One of the things that writing and speech can do is express what we're thinking one thought at a time. — David Lipsky

The way to finish the book is to turn down the volume on the stuff that's all about how other people react. — David Lipsky

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 Lipsky

I'm talking about the number of privileged, highly intelligent, motivated career-track people that I know, from my high school or college, who are, if you look into their eyes, empty and miserable. — David Lipsky

Hemingway changed prose; so did Salinger and Nabokov. — David Lipsky

But the sort of - this confusion of permissions, or this idea that pleasure and comfort are the, are really the ultimate goal and meaning of life. I think we're starting to see a generation die ... on the toxicity of that idea. — David Lipsky

David thought books existed to stop you from feeling lonely. — David Lipsky

But one of them has to do with the sense of, the sense of capturing, capturing what the world feels like to us, in the sort of way that I think that a reader can tell Another sensibility like mine exists. — David Lipsky

Entertainment's chief job is to make you so riveted by it that you can't tear your eyes away, so the advertisers can advertise. — David Lipsky

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

I know people who are medicated and it's their favorite subject. — David Lipsky

[We do some TV talk. He loves Seinfeld, thinks Friends is a little gooey. — David Lipsky

David Foster Wallace: Because I'd like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time instead of having to go back in my head and enjoy them then. — David Lipsky

It's just much easier with dogs. You don't get laid; but you also don't get the feeling you're hurting their feelings all the time. — David Lipsky

DFW: I think there are different people on the page than in real life. I do six to eight drafts of everything that I do. Um, I am probably not the smartest writer going. But I also
and I know, OK, this is gonna fit right into the persona
I work really really hard. I'm really
you give me twenty-four hours? If we'd done this interview through the mail? I could be really really really smart. I'm not all that fast. And I'm really self-conscious. And I get confused really easily. When I'm in a room by myself alone, and have enough time, I can be really really smart. And people are different that way. You know what I mean? I may not
I don't think I'm quite as smart, one-on-one with people, when I'm self-conscious, and I'm really really confused. And it's like, My dream would be for you to write this up, and then to send it to me, and I get to rewrite all my quotes to you. Which of course you'll never do ... — David Lipsky

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. — David Lipsky

David Foster Wallace: There's so much beauty and profundity in all kinds of shitty pop culture all around us. — David Lipsky

When I think of this trip, I see David and me in the front seat of the car. It's nighttime. It smells like chewing tobacco, soda, and smoke. (The smell of chewing tobacco is like a muddy lawn you've just fed a truckful of cough drops to.) The window is letting in a leak of cold air. R.E.M. is playing. The wheels are making their slightly sleepy sound of tape being stripped cleanly and endlessly off a long wall. On the other hand, we seem not to be moving at all, and the conversation is the best one I've ever had. — David Lipsky

My ambition is to not embarrass myself
which, if you know me, is a pretty serious ambition. — David Lipsky

I wanted to earn a living wage and to see something nice about me in the 'New York Times.' I wanted my mother to be proud. I wanted all the things you want and also feel silly for wanting. I wanted readers to say they'd enjoyed something of mine - to see my photo in magazines where I'd seen photos of other writers. — David Lipsky

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 Lipsky

This was the first thing I ever said, "All right, I'm gonna try to do the very best I can." Instead of doing this, "All right, I'll work at like three-quarters speed, and then I can always figure that if I just hadn't been a fuckup, the book coulda been really good." You know that defense system? You write the paper the night before, so if it doesn't get a great grade, you know that it could've been better.
And this worked
I worked as hard as I could on this. And in a weird way, you might think that would make me more nervous about whether people would like it. But there was this weird
you know like when you work out really well, there's this kind of tiredness that's real pleasant, and it's sort of placid. — David Lipsky

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. — David Lipsky

I'm not sure we're any better, but able to describe the attempt to track our wandering in circles in a way that perhaps somebody else can identify with. I don't think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their confusion. — David Lipsky

David (David Foster Wallace) had a caffeine social gift: Her was charmingly, vividly, overwhelmingly awake - he acted on other people like a slug of coffee - so they're the five most sleepless days I every spent with anyone. — David Lipsky

David Foster Wallace: I think one of the insidious lessons about TV is the meta-lesson that you're dumb. This is all you can do. This is easy, and you're the sort of person who really just wants to sit in a chair and have it easy. When in fact there are parts of us, in a way, that are a lot more ambitious than that. And what we need, I think - and I'm not saying I'm the person to do it. But I think what we need is seriously engaged art, that can teach again that we're smart. And that there's stuff that TV and movies - although they're great at certain things - cannot give us. — David Lipsky

If you can think of times in your life that you've treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it's probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we're here for is to learn how to do it. I know that sounds a little pious.
David Foster Wallace — David Lipsky

Because we're gonna get so interested in entertainment that we're not gonna want to do the work that generates the income that buys the products that pays for the advertising that disseminates the entertainment. — David Lipsky

David Foster Wallace: What writers have is a license and also the freedom to sit - to sit, clench their fists, and make themselves be excruciatingly aware of the stuff that we're mostly aware of only on a certain level. And that if the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is. Is to wake the reader up to stuff that 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. — David Lipsky

He had finished and collected the three years of drafts [of Infinite Jest], and finally sat down and typed the whole thing. Wallace didn't really type; he input the giant thing twice, with one finger. But a really fast finger. — David Lipsky

I finished and e-mailed to myself to see what it'd read like to open, and decided it looked a little loopy and that I'd been the right person to open it after all. I read him, thought about him, and I never saw him again except on television once. — David Lipsky

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. — David Lipsky

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