"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."

You may also like:

• 

  D. T. Max
  Author

• 

  Darin Strauss
  Writer

• 

  David Foster Wallace
  Novelist

• 

  Donald Margulies
  Playwright

• 

  Ernest Hemingway
  Author

• 

  Jason Segel
  Actor

• 

  Jesse Eisenberg
  Actor

• 

  Vladimir Nabokov
  Novelist

• 

  James Ponsoldt
  Film director