"I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified……" — David Foster Wallace
"I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard."
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David Foster Wallace
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303 Quotes by David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace has 303 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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We will, of course, without hesitation use art to parody, ridicule, debunk, or criticize ideologies.
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One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough…
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God, what a ghastly enterprise to be in, though-and what an odd way to achieve success. I'm an exhibitionist who…
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When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional…
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Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you…
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Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn't enough to make him great. If it were,…
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Some words have to be explicitly uttered, Lenore. Only by actually uttering certain words does one really DO what one…
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You have a great deal of yourself on the line, writing- your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky…
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Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare…
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No one can call themselves a writer until he or she has written at least fifty stories.
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Molly Notkin often confides on the phone to Joelle van Dyne about the one tormented love of Nokin's life thus…
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No single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.
See all 303 quotes by David Foster Wallace »
More Admixture Quotes
This quote is filed under Admixture Quotes,
one of 17 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie-for example,…
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Salt water when it turns into vapour becomes sweet, and the vapour does not form salt water when it condenses…
— Aristotle
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There is more evidence to prove that saltness [of the sea] is due to the admixture of some substance, besides…
— Aristotle
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...the institutional arrangement whereby most professional economists are heavily burdened with teaching and administrative duties may militate against a sufficient…
— Unknown Author
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After rain comes sunshine; After darkness comes the glorious dawn. There is no sorrow without its alloy of joy; there…
— Obafemi Awolowo
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For benefits return benefits; for injuries return justice without any admixture of revenge.
— Confucius
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I feel what they feel: man-hating, that volatile admixture of pity, contempt, disgust, envy, alienation, fear, and rage at men.…
— Judith Levine
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From the throes of inspiration and the eddies of thought the poet may at last be able to arrive at,…
— Eyvind Johnson
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Fermentation is the exhalation of a substance through the admixture of a ferment which, by virtue of its spirit, penetrates…
— Andreas Libavius
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As the Holy Trinity, our God is One Being, although Three Persons, so, likewise, we ourselves must be one. As…
— John of Kronstadt
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Every great genius has an admixture of madness.
— Aristotle
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The questions most furiously discussed are those which have in them a basis of truth, and yet a large admixture…
— Christian Nestell Bovee
See all 17 Admixture Quotes »