We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life "outside" the… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“...junior athletics is but one facet of the real gem: life's endless war against the self you cannot live without.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“When I was drunk I wanted to get sober and when I was sober I wanted to get drunk,' John L. says;… — 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
Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“...TV and popular film and most kinds of 'low' art-- which just means art whose primary aim is to make money-- is… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
A lot of writers tired of doing kind of hip, slick, funny, dark, exploding hypocrisy, underlining once again the point that life… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Happiness is not like we were walking around fingering razor blades or anything like that. But it just sort of seems as… — 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
“This, according to the fellows who saw me as fit for a Service career, put me ahead of the curve, to understand… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“It is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. It is a sense of radical… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“Were he now still among the living, Dr. Incandenza would now describe tennis in the paradoxical terms of what’s now called ‘Extra-Linear… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“Um um um um um. This business of—this business about marketing yourself, there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless we’re allowed to think… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
My whole life I've been a fraud. I'm not exaggerating. Pretty much all I've ever done all the time is try to… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
The lives of most people are small tight pallid and sad, more to be mourned than their deaths. We starve at the… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“one is that you attain the goal and realize the shocking realization that attaining the goal does not complete or redeem you,… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“(..)-Dr. G. would later say that the whole "my whole life flashed before me" phenomenon at the end is more like being… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
The basic idea that the purpose of life is to be happy or is to experience the most favorable ratio of pleasure… — 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
“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
“I felt more solidly composed, now that I was horizontal. I was impossible to knock down.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
“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
“It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological erasure.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
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
“It is within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share
