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.
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
"The Individual, Society and the State" (1940) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1940/individual.htm
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.
“To do that kind of job you must be mentally disturbed.”
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
2003
An Interview by Sheena McDonald (1995)
“The incapacity to name is a good symptom of disturbance.”
Source: Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
“Thinking is not always… comforting. It is always good, but not always comforting.”
Source: Royal Assassin
Comments during his first audience with German pilgrims
2005
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)
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/
