It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you. — 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… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
I'd like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time, instead of having to go back in… — 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
It's probably hard to feel any sort of Romantic spiritual connection to nature when you have to make your living from it. — 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
The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die. — 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
Whatever you get paid attention for is never what you think is most important about yourself. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention...it will actually be within your power to experience a crowded,… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Worship power-you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever ore power over others to keep the fear at bay.… — 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
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
But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about… — 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
But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will… — 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
When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e.,… — 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
(I'm not putting any of this well. I am not and never have been an intellectual. I am not articulate, and the… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
I was never the sort of child who believed in "monsters under the bed" or vampires, or who needed a night-light in… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Dostoevsky wrote fiction about identity, moral value, death, will, sexual vs. spiritual love, greed, freedom, obsession, reason, faith, suicide. And he did… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression.… — 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
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 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
I had, by thirteen, developed a sort of Taoist hubris about my ability to control via non-control. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there… — 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
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
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 really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves, they've got their own vision, they have their own… — 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
![“This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression. The character has traits of myself. I really lost friends while writing on that story, I became ugly and unhappy and just yelled at people. The cruel thing with…” quote by David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/8fa/david-foster-wallace-161_about-yourself_this-story-the-depressed-person-was-the_2572995.jpg)
