David Foster Wallace Quotes - Page 3

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• Progressive liberals seem incapable of stating the obvious truth: that we who are well off should be willing to share more of what we have with poor people not for the poor people's sake but for our own; i.e., we should share what we have in order to become less narrow and frightened and lonely and self-centered people.

  David Foster Wallace

  Lonely, Self, Order

  David Foster Wallace (2005). “Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays”, p.66, Hachette UK

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• That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine.

  David Foster Wallace

  Fire, Trying, Imagine

  "The Pale King". Book by David Foster Wallace, April 15, 2011.

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• Is it possible really to love other people? If I’m lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential relief—I need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isn’t a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody else’s needs that I can’t even feel directly? And yet if I can’t do this, I’m damned to loneliness, which I definitely don’t want … so I’m back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons.

  David Foster Wallace

  Lonely, Pain, Loneliness

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• Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.

  David Foster Wallace

  Acceptance, Matter, Fatigue

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• An ad that pretends to be art is - at absolute best - like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair.

  David Foster Wallace

  Lonely, Art, Confused

  "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". Essay by David Foster Wallace, February 1, 1997.

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• Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking?

  David Foster Wallace

  Life, Differences, People

  David Foster Wallace (2012). “Consider The Lobster: Essays and Arguments”, p.103, Hachette UK

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• Good literature makes your head throb heartlike

  David Foster Wallace

  Literature, Good Literature

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• We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.

  David Foster Wallace

  Dream

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• ...logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.

  David Foster Wallace

  Guarantees, Infinite Jest, Logical

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.145, Hachette UK

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• It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.

  David Foster Wallace

  Anxiety, Marketing, Advertising

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.284, Hachette UK

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• Perhaps this is what it means to go mad: to be emptied and to be aware of the emptiness.

  David Foster Wallace

  Mean, Mad, Emptiness

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• Are we not all of us fanatics? I say only what you of the U.S.A. pretend you do not know. Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? This is a craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you.

  David Foster Wallace

  Lying, Love Is, Attachment

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• There is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness.

  David Foster Wallace

  Kindness, Anxiety Attacks, Infinite Jest

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.146, Hachette UK

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• Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.

  David Foster Wallace

  Crush, Gratitude, Lying

  "Will David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King Be the Most Boring Book Ever?" by Lane Brown, www.vulture.com. March 3, 2009.

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• Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est" ("They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier").

  David Foster Wallace

  Eating, Legality, Bits

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• We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?

  David Foster Wallace

  Lonely, Loneliness, Being Alone

  "The Oscars Get It All Wrong Again: David Foster Wallace and the Best Film of 2015" by Allen Callaci, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 19, 2016.

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• Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off; David Lynch is interested in the ear.

  David Foster Wallace

  Cutting, Ears, Tarantino

  David Foster Wallace (2012). “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”, p.130, Hachette UK

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• I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I.

  David Foster Wallace

  Crazy, Issues, Style

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.38, Hachette UK

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• The point here is ... to be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.

  David Foster Wallace

  Arrogant, Littles, Stuff

  David Foster Wallace (2009). “This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life”, p.35, Hachette UK

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• Real leaders are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

  David Foster Wallace

  Real, People, Leader

  David Foster Wallace (2005). “Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays”, p.137, Hachette UK

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• Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith. . . . Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care.

  David Foster Wallace

  Attachment, Giving, Care

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.83, Hachette UK

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• Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.

  David Foster Wallace

  Support, Important, Vivid

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

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• I think it's easy to stop smoking; it's just hard not to commit a felony after you stop.

  David Foster Wallace

  Thinking, Smoking, Easy

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• If you worship power, you will feel weak and afraid, needing ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.

  David Foster Wallace

  Worship, Weak, Feels

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

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• Great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communication-theorists sometimes called "exformation," which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient.

  David Foster Wallace

  Communication, Insightful, Connections

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