To be, in a word, unborable.... It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
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… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
It was when I was the age where you can, as they say, "hear voices" without worrying that something is wrong with… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
The first time I lay actual eyes on the real David Lynch on the set of his movie, he's peeing on a… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
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
At root, vulgar just means popular on a mass scale. It is the semantic opposite of pretentious or snobby. It is humility… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Whatever you get paid attention for is never what you think is most important about yourself. — 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
I had, by thirteen, developed a sort of Taoist hubris about my ability to control via non-control. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Are we not all of us fanatics? I say only what you of the U.S.A. pretend you do not know. Attachments are… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
I knew my limitations and the limitations of the courts I played on, and adjusted thusly. I was at my best in… — 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
The desire for perfect release and the real-world impossibility of perfect, whenever-you-want-it release had together produced a tension they could no longer… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Probably the most dangerous thing about college education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
There's good self-consciousness, and then there's toxic, paralyzing, raped-by-psychic-Bedouins self-consciousness. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important-if you want to operate on… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
But of course there are all kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e.… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
It feels intensely twisted to see reigning industry queen Jenna Jameson chilling out at the Vivid booth in Jordaches and a latex… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Most of the writers I know are weird hybrids. There's a strong streak of egomania coupled with extreme shyness. Writing's kind 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
