Life Quotes by David Foster Wallace

“Life is like tennis. Those who serve best usually win.”

— David Foster Wallace

life's endless war against the self you cannot live without.

— David Foster Wallace

Capital T-truth is about life before death.

— David Foster Wallace

“You might consider how to escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage.”

— David Foster Wallace

“It is a fact of life that certain people are corrosive to others' self esteem simply as a function of who and…

— David Foster Wallace

“In life, the microphone passes your lips but once... you had better be ready to sing.”

— David Foster Wallace

“We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately (...)…

— David Foster Wallace

“None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T…

— David Foster Wallace

The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot…

— David Foster Wallace

The entire ball game, in terms of both the exam and life, was what you gave attention to vs. what you willed…

— David Foster Wallace

“He just sits there. I want to be like that. Able to just sit all quiet and pull life toward me, one…

— David Foster Wallace

There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves…

— David Foster Wallace

“I can remember watching large, tentative, individual flakes of snow falling and blowing around aimlessly in the wind generated by the train…

— David Foster Wallace

“Even the novice alone can see quickly that a life conducted, temporarily or no, as a simple renunciation of value becomes at…

— David Foster Wallace

“It’s the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I’m operating on the automatic,…

— David Foster Wallace

The fact that the most powerful and significant connections in our lives are (at the time) invisible to us seems to me…

— David Foster Wallace

But if I decide to decide there’s a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won’t the reason for this…

— David Foster Wallace

It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating…

— David Foster Wallace

“And I submit that this is what the real, no-shit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: How…

— David Foster Wallace

“In lots of ways, television purveys and enables dreams, and most of these dreams involve some sort of transcendence of average daily…

— David Foster Wallace

“But I gotta tell you, I just think to look across this room and automatically assume that somebody else is less aware…

— David Foster Wallace

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing…

— David Foster Wallace

We live today in a world where most of the really important developments in everything from math and physics and astronomy to…

— David Foster Wallace

“A bird named Vlad the Impaler, who spent the bulk of his life hissing and looking at himself in a little mirror…

— David Foster Wallace

“JAY: Why is a story more upfront than life? LENORE: It just seems more honest, somehow. JAY: Honest meaning closer to the…

— David Foster Wallace

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough,…

— David Foster Wallace

“...in real life I always seem to have a hard time winding up a conversation or asking somebody to leave, and sometimes…

— David Foster Wallace

“Even as I wrote my note to Fern, for instance, expressing sentiments and regrets that were real, a part of me was…

— David Foster Wallace

“I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day.…

— David Foster Wallace

“The almost-35-year-old Terry Schmidt had very nearly nothing left anymore of the delusion that he differed from the great herd of the…

— David Foster Wallace

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing…

— David Foster Wallace

“To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention.…

— David Foster Wallace

“The 46-year-old recipient of the Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart was actively window shopping in Cambridge, Massachusetts’ fashionable Har­vard Square when a…

— David Foster Wallace

“This is another paradox, that many of the most important impressions and thoughts in a person's life are ones that flash through…

— David Foster Wallace

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as…

— David Foster Wallace

“There's more to life than sitting there interfacing, it might be a newsflash to you.”

— David Foster Wallace

Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most…

— David Foster Wallace

“It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish”

— David Foster Wallace

“...junior athletics is but one facet of the real gem: life's endless war against the self you cannot live without.”

— David Foster Wallace

“I really feel, sitting, trying to extrapolate on the equations that have informed the last two years of my life, as though…

— David Foster Wallace