David Foster Wallace Quote by William Deresiewicz

“In The Pale King, David Foster Wallace has his narrator remark that “it was a little bit like a for-profit company, my family, in that you were pretty much only as good as your last sales quarter.” quote by William Deresiewicz — Download Open image

““In The Pale King, David Foster Wallace has his narrator remark that “it was a little bit like a for-profit company, my family, in that you were pretty much only as good as your last sales quarter.””

William Deresiewicz

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David Foster Wallace

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“No real excellence, personal or social, artistic, philosophical, scientific, or moral, can arise without solitude.”

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If you're oblivious to other people, chances are pretty good that you're going to hurt them.

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Don't play it safe. Resist the seductions of the cowardly values our society has come to prize so highly: comfort, convenience, security, predictability, control. These, too, are nets. Above all, resist the fear of failure. Yes, you will make mistakes. But they will be your mistakes, not someone else's. And you will survive them, and you will know yourself better…

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“there’s a bigger social reward for being able to talk about books than for actually reading them.”

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We proceed by doubt, by trial and error, by resisting the impulse to lunge after certainty.

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“...Novels--which, after all, are training grounds for responding to the world, imaginative sanctuaries in which to hone and test our ethical judgments and choices.”

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People’s stories are the most personal thing they have, and paying attention to those stories is just about the most important thing you can…

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“Life is more than a job; jobs are more than a paycheck; and a country is more than its wealth. Education is more than the acquisition of marketable skills, and you are more than your ability to contribute to your employer’s bottom line or the nation’s GDP, no matter what the rhetoric of politicians or executives would have you think.…

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“By the time they finish high school—after years of learning how to please their teachers and coaches, not to mention schmoozing with their parents’…

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“Getting A’s no longer means that everything’s okay, assuming that it ever did. “We have students, who, no matter what else is going on in their lives, know how to get those grades,” Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann, Stanford’s university chaplain, has said. “It’s important for us to take away the blinders that keep us from seeing their distress.”

William Deresiewicz

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“In his commencement address at Kenyon College, the novelist and social critic David Foster Wallace eloquently said, “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life,…

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“ List of Artists Who Created Fantasy Worlds to Try and Cure Bouts of Sadness 1. Italo Calvino 2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez 3. Jim…

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“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody…

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“The horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle: That our endless and…

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“David Foster Wallace: I always fear that when I really impose my will on something, the universe is gonna punish me.”

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You don't have to write like David Foster Wallace or James Baldwin or Maggie Nelson - indeed, you shouldn't. Those writers are doing it…

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I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say that I've read very little of David Foster Wallace's work. It's a huge gap in my education, one…

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My occupation has been a great deal with David Foster Wallace, and he didn't manage it, and he was very much looking for something…

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“Current mood: David Foster Wallace meets Amy Winehouse.”

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“David Foster Wallace: We sit around and bitch about how TV has ruined the audience for reading—when really all it’s done is given us…

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“David Foster Wallace: I think the reason why people behave in an ugly manner is that it’s really scary to be alive and to be human, and people are really really afraid. And that the reasons… That the fear is the basic condition, and there are all kinds of reasons for why we’re so afraid. But the fact of the…

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David Foster Wallace Quote by William Deresiewicz

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