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 Copy Share Image
Like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist', i.e., somebody whose adult job… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can,… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
I believe I want adult sanity, which seems to me the only unalloyed form of heroism available today. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
I have heard upscale adult U.S. citizens ask the ship's Guest Relations Desk whether snorkeling necessitates getting wet...I now know the precise… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
In reality, genuine epiphanies are extremely rare. In contemporary adult life maturation & acquiescence to reality are gradual processes. Modern usage usually… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Think of the old cliché about ‘the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.’ This, like many clichés, so lame… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
But the young educated adults of the 90s -- who were, of course, the children of the same impassioned infidelities and divorces… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
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… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“I felt more solidly composed, now that I was horizontal. I was impossible to knock down.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological erasure.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Footnote: 79) The anchor is gigantic and must weigh a hundred tons, and -- delightfully -- it really is anchor-shaped, i.e. the same shape… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“The paradoxical intercourse of audience and celebrity. The suppressed awareness that the whole reason ordinary people found celebrity fascinating was that they were not,… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“I am coming to see that the sensation of the worst nightmares, a sensation that can be felt asleep or awake, is identical to… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“He cranks the condo’s AC way down at night and still most mornings wakes up soaked, fetally curled, entombed in that kind of psychic… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“If you’re subjected to enough great salesmen and salespitches and marketing concepts for long enough—like from your earliest Saturday-morning cartoons, let’s say—it is only… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“Why is the truth usually not just un- but anti-interesting?” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“She almost reminds the engineer of certain types in high school whom everyone adored because you sensed it made no difference to them whether… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
To be, in a word, unborable… It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
