David Foster Wallace Quotes

When you're young, you look at television and think, there's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.

I've decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks.

The gallery is generating work for the masses.

Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it's popular, it's not culture.

Give the public what it wants.

Things meant to appeal to the masses usually end up appealing to no one.

Popular culture is simply a reflection of what the majority seems to want.

For some critics we might be uncool on account of our popularity.

I am one with the popular culture.

I think there's a far more general audience now because I've done more populist stuff on telly.

Pop music - deriving from the word 'popular' - for me, it's just great to be a part of music that reaches a large amount of people and not just a small amount of people.

Some people think big audiences are crass and that, say, a comedy that appeals to a wide audience is pandering. Other people would argue that you could say that about Moliere.

I think network TV to a large extent has underestimated the intelligence of the American public for so many years now. It's tried to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I think the average viewer is much more intelligent than that and crave a little more complexity and are willing to pay more attention.

At root, vulgar just means popular on a mass scale. It is the semantic opposite of pretentious or snobby. It is humility with a comb-over. It is Nielsen ratings and Barnum's axiom and the real bottom line. It is big, big business.

When something works on a huge level, everybody does it.

The reality of America is mass-market stupidity.

Anything popular is populist, and populist is rarely a good adjective.

For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the 'masses' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies want to give the masses what they want.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

If it's accessible by hundreds of millions of people, then it's as mainstream as it gets.

Seriously, 'Honey Boo Boo' is the decay of Western civilization. Just because so many people watch the show doesn't mean it's good.

Television is a powerful medium that has to be used for something better than sitcoms and police shows. On the other hand, if you don't recognize the forces that play on what people watch and what they don't then you're a fool and you should be in a different business.

I want to make something commercial that people can pick up on.

Hollywood is tied hand and foot to the demands for artificiality of the masses all over the world.

People love cliches. If you can give people cliches, that's very good TV, then.