"Books are a social substitute;

you read people, who, at one level, you'd like to hang out with. Chapters, pages, novels, articles are the next best thing. Even when it's just a good factual writer, you want to hang around them to get the facts, the way you'd sit next to a brainy kid at a test to copy off their answer. David's writing self - it's most pronounced in his essays - was the best friend you'd ever have, spotting everything, whispering jokes, sweeping you past what was irritating or boring or awful in humane style."

Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky, pg. xx :)