“Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

— David Foster Wallace

The quote "Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." is famous quote attributed to David Foster Wallace (1962–2008), American fiction writer and essayist.

An Interview by Larry McCaffery
Essays
Variant: I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 18, 2023. History

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David Foster Wallace185

American fiction writer and essayist 1962–2008

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

“He who refuses to submit is at once labelled "queer," "different," and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

"The Individual, Society and the State" (1940) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1940/individual.htm <br class="br">Context: The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime. The wholesale mechanisation of modern life has increased uniformity a thousandfold. It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is "public opinion." Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who refuses to submit is at once labelled "queer," "different," and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life.

“My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

“To do that kind of job you must be mentally disturbed.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

On magistrates, as quoted in "Did I say This? in The Observer (20 April 2008) http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/20/italy <br class="br">2003

“McDonald: Now a lot of people find great comfort from religion. Not everybody is as you are – well-favored, handsome, wealthy, with a good job, happy family life. I mean, your life is good – not everybody's life is good, and religion brings them comfort.Dawkins: There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting – it might be more comforting, for all I know. But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

An Interview by Sheena McDonald (1995)

“The incapacity to name is a good symptom of disturbance.”

Roland Barthes (1915–1980) French philosopher, critic and literary theorist

Source: Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

“Thinking is not always… comforting. It is always good, but not always comforting.”

Robin Hobb book Royal Assassin

Source: Royal Assassin

“The ways of the Lord are not comfortable, but we were not created for comfort, but for greatness, for good.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

Comments during his first audience with German pilgrims
2005

“I succeeded in making you care. If you feel nothing, I failed you as a storyteller. I love happy endings, but some readers need the darker stories, too. The stories that don’t make them feel disturbed by their own reality because it doesn’t reflect what they’re used to seeing in fiction. There’s some comfort in harsher stories, and witnessing how one character rebuilds after tragedy can provide hope for the reader.”

Adam Silvera (1990) American author

On what he aims for as a storyteller in “History Is All You Left Me Author Adam Silvera Talks Second Books and More with Nicola Yoon” https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/teen/history-left-author-adam-silvera-talks-second-books-nicola-yoon/ (Barnes & Noble; 2017 Jan 19)

“Good journalism questions the land of a thousand taboos even at the risk of uncanny and disturbing findings.”

Marco Respinti (1964)

Source: "China’s Human Harvest and Illegal Organ Trade: Publish or Perish?" https://bitterwinter.org/a-universal-declaration-on-combating-and-preventing-forced-organ-harvesting/

“Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

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David Foster Wallace185

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