David Foster Wallace Quotes

Quotes about:

• You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.

  David Foster Wallace

  Life, Thinking, People

  "Infinite Jest". Book by David Foster Wallace, February 1, 1996.

  30 Copy quote

• If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

  David Foster Wallace

  Real, Grieving, Skeletons

  "'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

  32 Copy quote

• It takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak.

  David Foster Wallace

  Personal Courage, Infinite Jest, Weak

  "Infinite Jest". Book by David Foster Wallace, February 1, 1996.

  18 Copy quote

• The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.

  David Foster Wallace

  Inspirational, Truth, Freedom

  "Infinite Jest". Book by David Foster Wallace, February 1, 1996.

  40 Copy quote

• Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

  David Foster Wallace

  Bipolar, Secret, Different

  51 Copy quote

• Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

  David Foster Wallace

  Worship You, Choices, Yahweh

  "'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

  18 Copy quote
• 

  If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

  David Foster Wallace

  Motivational, Perfectionism, Fidelity

  61 Copy quote

• Two young salmon are swimming along one day. As they do, they are passed by a wiser, older fish coming the other way. The wiser fish greets the two as he passes, saying, "Morning boys, how's the water?" The other two continue to swim in silence for a little while, until the first one turns to the other and asks, "What the hell is water?"

  David Foster Wallace

  Morning, Swimming, Boys

  14 Copy quote

• Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.

  David Foster Wallace

  Mean, Exercise, Thinking

  "This Is Water". David Foster Wallace's commencement speech at Kenyon College, www.youtube.com. May 21, 2005.

  29 Copy quote

• Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.

  David Foster Wallace

  Inspirational, Trying, Infinite Jest

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.127, Hachette UK

  17 Copy quote

• Good writing isn’t a science. It’s an art, and the horizon is infinite. You can always get better.

  David Foster Wallace

  Art, Writing, Get Better

  15 Copy quote

• No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.

  David Foster Wallace

  Struggle, Home, Journey

  David Foster Wallace (2005). “Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays”, p.38, Hachette UK

  20 Copy quote

• The man who knows his limitations, has none.

  David Foster Wallace

  Men, Knows, Limitation

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.66, Hachette UK

  6 Copy quote

• How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.

  David Foster Wallace

  Understanding, Being Weird, Odd

  54 Copy quote

• God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I’m not crazy about.

  David Foster Wallace

  Crazy, Style, Laid Back

  10 Copy quote

• If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it

  David Foster Wallace

  Jobs, Children, Thinking

  21 Copy quote

• You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. ... How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away.

  David Foster Wallace

  Running, Games, Broken

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.128, Hachette UK

  7 Copy quote

• Truly decent, innocent people can be taxing to be around.

  David Foster Wallace

  People, Innocent, Decent

  David Foster Wallace (2012). “Consider The Lobster: Essays and Arguments”, p.18, Hachette UK

  6 Copy quote

• Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly.

  David Foster Wallace

  Lonely, Loneliness, Psychics

  David Foster Wallace (2012). “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”, p.21, Hachette UK

  33 Copy quote

• If you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers who when they write, it makes your own brain voice like a tuning fork, and you just resonate with them. And when that happens, reading those writers ... becomes a source of unbelievable joy. It’s like eating candy for the soul. And I sometimes have a hard time understanding how people who don’t have that in their lives make it through the day.

  David Foster Wallace

  Reading, Writing, Hard Times

  39 Copy quote

• I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

  David Foster Wallace

  One Line, Enough, Paranoid

  53 Copy quote

• In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

  David Foster Wallace

  Worship You, Choices, Atheism

  "'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

  45 Copy quote

• True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.

  David Foster Wallace

  Cheer, Exercise, Years

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “The Pale King”, p.19, Penguin UK

  36 Copy quote

• Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.

  David Foster Wallace

  Inspirational, Letting Go, Addiction

  11 Copy quote

• Whatever you get paid attention for is never what you think is most important about yourself.

  David Foster Wallace

  Thinking, Important, Attention

  27 Copy quote

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