You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
Great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communication-theorists sometimes called "exformation," which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Great storytelling and humor rely on the omission of information to elicit deeper connections in the audience.
In this quote, David Foster Wallace highlights the similarities between great short stories and great jokes, emphasizing that both forms of communication utilize 'exformation.' This concept involves strategically leaving out certain pieces of information in order to evoke a more profound response and create a richer tapestry of associations in the minds of the audience, leading to a greater emotional or cognitive impact.
Themes
StorytellingHumorCommunicationExformationConnections
In practice
Example use cases
An author discussing the craft of writing in a workshop.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes →Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
David Foster WallaceRead
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
David Foster WallaceRead
Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
David Foster WallaceRead
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
David Foster WallaceRead
Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
David Foster WallaceRead
Similar quotes
No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made.
Flannery O'ConnorRead
Did you know that the human voice is the only pure instrument? That it has notes no other instrument has? It's like being between the keys of a piano. The notes are there, you can sing them, but they can't be found on any instrument. That's like me. I live in between this. I live in both worlds, the black and white world.
Nina SimoneRead
The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me. Everybody can look, but they don't necessarily see. I never calculate or consider; I see a situation and I know that it's right, even if I have to go back to get the proper lighting.
Andre KerteszRead
I've never liked the word 'celebrity.' I like to photograph people who are good at what they do.
Annie LeibovitzRead
Writing for television is completely different from movie scriptwriting. A movie is all about the director's vision, but television is a writer's medium.
Shonda RhimesRead
I don't know, on a sitcom, and in theatre especially, you have to really be listening to an audience. And if you're losing them, you can hear the sniffs, and the playbills shuffling and whatnot.
Neil Patrick HarrisRead