David Foster Wallace Quotes - Page 4

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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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• In fact, the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians makes us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard even to name, much less talk about.

  David Foster Wallace

  Hurt, Names, Care

  "David Foster Wallace on John McCain: 'The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and the Shrub'" by David Foster Wallace, www.rollingstone.com. April 13, 2000.

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• ...most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.

  David Foster Wallace

  Thinking, People, Substance

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

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• What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.

  David Foster Wallace

  Goes On, Littles, Tiny

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• It's in the democratic citizen's nature to be like a leaf that doesn't believe in the tree it's part of.

  David Foster Wallace

  Inspirational, Believe, Tree

  "The Pale King". Book by David Foster Wallace, www.nytimes.com. 2011.

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• Most of the writers I know are weird hybrids. There's a strong streak of egomania coupled with extreme shyness. Writing's kind of like exhibitionism in private. And there's also a strange loneliness, and a desire to have some kind of conversation with people, but not a real great ability to do it in person.

  David Foster Wallace

  Strong, Real, Loneliness

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• The point of books is to combat loneliness.

  David Foster Wallace

  Loneliness, Book, Combat

  "Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself". Book by David Lipsky, www.nytimes.com. 2010.

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• It took years after I’d graduated from Amherst to realize that people were actually far more complicated and interesting than books, that almost everyone else suffered the same secret fears and inadequacies as I, and that feeling alone and inferior was actually the great valent bond between us all. I wish I’d been smart enough to understand that when I was an adolescent.

  David Foster Wallace

  Smart, Book, Years

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• My worst character flaw that I'm conscious of is that I tend to think my way into circles instead of resolving anything. It's paralyzing and boring for people around me.

  David Foster Wallace

  Character, Thinking, Circles

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• And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don’t really mean what I’m saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.

  David Foster Wallace

  Powerful, Mistake, Coffee

  David Foster Wallace (2012). “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”, p.55, Hachette UK

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• every failure is also a victory.

  David Foster Wallace

  Victory

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• Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude - but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense.

  David Foster Wallace

  Sound, Adults, May

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

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• I love the way you love, but I hate the way I'm supposed to love you back.

  David Foster Wallace

  Hate, Love You, Way

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• I wish you way more than luck.

  David Foster Wallace

  Luck, Wish, Way

  David Foster Wallace (2009). “This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life”, p.138, Hachette UK

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• I don't think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their confusion.

  David Foster Wallace

  Thinking, People, Confusion

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• Almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it.

  David Foster Wallace

  Important, Engineers, Happens

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.204, Hachette UK

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• The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die.

  David Foster Wallace

  Thinking, Different, Used

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• There is no hatred in my love for you. Only a sadness I feel all the more strongly for my inability to explain or describe it.

  David Foster Wallace

  Sadness, Hatred, My Love For You

  David Foster Wallace (2004). “The Broom of the System: A Novel”, p.187, Penguin

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• It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

  David Foster Wallace

  Mean, Attention, Pay

  David Foster Wallace (2009). “This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life”, p.56, Hachette UK

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• Some persons can give themselves away to an ambitious pursuit and have that be all the giving-themselves-away-to-something they need to do. Though sometimes this changes as the players get older and the pursuit more stress-fraught. American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret.

  David Foster Wallace

  Stress, Player, People

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• ...Genuine pathological openness is about as seductive as Tourette's Syndrome.

  David Foster Wallace

  Seductive, Syndromes, Tourettes

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.715, Hachette UK

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• There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says 'Morning, boys. How's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes 'What the hell is water?'

  David Foster Wallace

  Morning, Swimming, Boys

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

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• Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties - all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name's Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion - these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

  David Foster Wallace

  Sex, Loneliness, Party

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• I am not what you see and hear.

  David Foster Wallace

  "Infinite Jest".

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• The severing of an established connection is exponentially more painful than the rejection of an attempted connection.

  David Foster Wallace

  Rejection, Connections, Painful

  David Foster Wallace (2004). “The Broom of the System: A Novel”, p.171, Penguin

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