Thinking Quotes by David Foster Wallace

Whatever you get paid attention for is never what you think is most important about yourself.

— David Foster Wallace

I think it's easy to stop smoking; it's just hard not to commit a felony after you stop.

— David Foster Wallace

You have decided being scared is caused mostly by thinking.

— David Foster Wallace

You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.

— David Foster Wallace

The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die.

— David Foster Wallace

I just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art.

— David Foster Wallace

I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries.…

— David Foster Wallace

I think the only thing for me, the tricky thing with the footnotes, is that they are an irritant, and they require…

— David Foster Wallace

It's all very confusing. I think I'm very honest and candid, but I'm also proud of how honest and candid I am…

— David Foster Wallace

I want to tell you,' the voice on the phone said. 'My head is filled with things to say.' ... 'I don't…

— David Foster Wallace

...most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.

— David Foster Wallace

I don't think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in…

— David Foster Wallace

she committed suicide by putting her extremities down the garbage disposal-first one arm and then, kind of miraculously if you think about…

— David Foster Wallace

The way I think about things and experience things is not particularly linear, and it's not orderly, and it's not pyramidical, and…

— David Foster Wallace

That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with…

— David Foster Wallace

Boo, I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants or vampires or whatever. I…

— David Foster Wallace

The Sophists had this idea: Forget this idea of what's true or not—what you want to do is rhetoric; you want to…

— David Foster Wallace

You don't have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness ... has to do with…

— David Foster Wallace

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

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

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

In reality, genuine epiphanies are extremely rare. In contemporary adult life maturation & acquiescence to reality are gradual processes. Modern usage usually…

— David Foster Wallace

If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern,…

— David Foster Wallace

“I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a…

— David Foster Wallace

I read," I say. "I study and read. I bet I've read everything you read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries.…

— David Foster Wallace

“Corporations are getting better and better at seducing us into thinking the way they think—of profits as the telos and responsibility as…

— David Foster Wallace

And I was -- this is just how I was afraid you'd take it. I knew it, that you'd think this means…

— David Foster Wallace

“Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to…

— David Foster Wallace

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

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

You are what you love. No? You are, completely and only, what you would die for without, as you say, the thinking…

— David Foster Wallace

I miss everyone. I can remember being young and feeling a thing and identifying it as homesickness, and then thinking well now…

— David Foster Wallace

I'm very bright, but I'm terrified of sounding like someone who thinks he's very bright-because those people are assholes.

— David Foster Wallace

My worst character flaw that I'm conscious of is that I tend to think my way into circles instead of resolving anything.…

— David Foster Wallace

I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that…

— David Foster Wallace

I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a…

— David Foster Wallace

I tend to think of fiction as being mainly about characters and human beings and inner experience, whereas essays can be much…

— David Foster Wallace

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

And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying…

— David Foster Wallace