You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
No one can call themselves a writer until he or she has written at least fifty stories.
Interpretation
True writers must produce a significant body of work to earn the title.
This quote by David Foster Wallace emphasizes the idea that the label of 'writer' is not simply a title one can assume; it requires demonstrable effort and output. By suggesting that one must write at least fifty stories, Wallace points to the importance of practice, dedication, and accumulation of experiences in the journey to becoming a true writer.
In practice
A writing workshop discussion about what it means to be a writer.
You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
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.
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
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.
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
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 youβve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and itβs like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
True education is the ability to discern the difference between what you do know and what you don't.
Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.
A child from the age of 2 or 3 absorbs what is in the environment and what generates hatred for anyone perceived to be different.
The best morals kids get from any book is just the capacity to empathize with other people, to care about the characters and their feelings. So you don't have to write a preachy book to do that. You just have to make it a fun book with characters they care about, and they will become better people as a result.
A man is not learned until he can read, write and swim.
Cambridge is one of the best universities in the world, especially in my field.
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