David Foster Wallace Quotes

310 quotes in 4027 categories

• We will, of course, without hesitation use art to parody, ridicule, debunk, or criticize ideologies.
• One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner either.
• God, what a ghastly enterprise to be in, though-and what an odd way to achieve success. I'm an exhibitionist who wants to hide, but is…
• When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information…
• Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or…
• Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn't enough to make him great. If it were, Judith Krantz and John Grisham…
• Some words have to be explicitly uttered, Lenore. Only by actually uttering certain words does one really DO what one SAYS. 'Love' is one of…
• You have a great deal of yourself on the line, writing- your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky thing about fiction writing; a…
• Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about…
• No one can call themselves a writer until he or she has written at least fifty stories.
• Molly Notkin often confides on the phone to Joelle van Dyne about the one tormented love of Nokin's life thus far, an erotically circumscribed G.W.…
• No single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.
• Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties - all…
• It was when I was the age where you can, as they say, "hear voices" without worrying that something is wrong with you. I "heard…
• It's probably hard to feel any sort of Romantic spiritual connection to nature when you have to make your living from it.
• It feels intensely twisted to see reigning industry queen Jenna Jameson chilling out at the Vivid booth in Jordaches and a latex bustier and to…
• Kafka's evocations are, rather, unconscious and almost sub-archetypal, the little-kid stuff from which myths derive; this is why we tend to call even his weirdest…
• Worship power-you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever ore power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect,…
• 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 mixocological difference between…
• I felt, as I became a later and later bloomer, alienated not just from my own recalcitrant glabrous little body but in a way from…

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