”There are a few books I have read that I’ve never been the same after, and I think all good writing somehow addresses the concern of and acts as an anodyne against loneliness. We’re all terribly, terribly lonely. And there’s a way, at least in prose fiction, that can allow you to be intimate with the world and with a mind and with characters that you just can’t be in the real world.

I don’t know what you’re thinking. I don’t know that much about you as I don’t know that much about my parents or my lover or my sister, but a piece of fiction that’s really true allows you to be intimate with… I don’t want to say people, but it allows you to be intimate with a world that resembles our own in enough emotional particulars so that the way different things must feel is carried out with us into the real world.

I think what I would like my stuff to do is make people less lonely.

David Foster Wallace, in a 1993 interview (bottom section of the linked post). (via gregbrown) (via everybodycares) (via intweetion) (via elvira) (via counterforce) (via shorterexcerpts)