David Foster Wallace Quotes - Page 11

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For those who've never experienced a sunrise in the rural midwest, it's roughly as soft and romantic as someone's abruptly hitting the lights in a dark room.

David Foster Wallace

Dark, Light, Sunrise

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And when he came to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.

David Foster Wallace

Beach, Rain, Sky

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I want to tell you,' the voice on the phone said. 'My head is filled with things to say.' ... 'I don't mind,' Hal said softly. 'I could wait forever.' 'That's what you think,' the voice said. The connection was cut.

David Foster Wallace

Cutting, Thinking, Phones

David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.32, Hachette UK

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Dieting makes me want to murder everyone around me.

David Foster Wallace

Dieting, Want, Murder

David Foster Wallace (2004). “The Broom of the System: A Novel”, p.83, Penguin

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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 the whole elemental exterior I'd come to see as my co-conspirator.

David Foster Wallace

Body, Littles, Way

David Foster Wallace (2012). “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”, p.14, Hachette UK

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Most of us will still take nihilism over neanderthalism.

David Foster Wallace

Nihilism, Stills

David Foster Wallace (2012). “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”, p.56, Hachette UK

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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 a Slippery Nipple and a fuzzy navel.

David Foster Wallace

Differences, Ships, Nipples

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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 I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on.

David Foster Wallace

Writing, Trying, Juggernaut

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'This thing I feel, I can't name it straight out but it seems important, do you feel it too?' — this sort of direct question is not for the squeamish. For one thing, it's perilously close to 'Do you like me? Please like me,' which you know quite well that 99% of all the interhuman manipulation and bullshit gamesmanship that goes on goes on precisely because the idea of saying this sort of thing straight out is regarded as somehow obscene.

David Foster Wallace

Names, Ideas, Bullshit

"Brief Interviews With Hideous Men".

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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 voices" all the time as a small child.

David Foster Wallace

Children, Voice, Worry

"All That" by David Foster Wallace, www.newyorker.com. December 14, 2009.

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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

Spiritual, Connections, Feels

David Foster Wallace (2012). “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”, p.73, Hachette UK

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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 stories nightmarish rather than surreal.

David Foster Wallace

Kids, Stories, Littles

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Scenery is here. Wish you were beautiful.

David Foster Wallace

Beautiful, Wish, Wish You

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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. I wear out spines and ROM drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

David Foster Wallace

Book, Reading, Thinking

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But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying.

David Foster Wallace

Winning, World, Kind

"'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

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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.

David Foster Wallace

Crush, Selfish, Simple

"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: An Essay". Book by David Foster Wallace, 1997.

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I had, by thirteen, developed a sort of Taoist hubris about my ability to control via non-control.

David Foster Wallace

Hubris, Ability, Thirteen

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A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane.

David Foster Wallace

Writing, Airplane, Novelists

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My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it.

David Foster Wallace

Shoes, Bumps, Infinite Jest

"Infinite Jest". Book by David Foster Wallace, February 1, 1996.

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The sound of wind had become, for me, silence. When it went away, I was left with the squeak of the blood in my head and the aural glitter of all those little eardrum hairs quivering like a drunk in withdrawal.

David Foster Wallace

Hair, Blood, Wind

"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace, www.nytimes.com. 1997.

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The truth is that the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theatre. The grand gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the external foe, the climactic battle whose outcome resolves all--all designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify and audience. Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality--there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand?Here is the truth--actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested.

David Foster Wallace

Real, Choices, Childhood

"The Pale King". Book by David Foster Wallace, 2011.

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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 know already that she has a tattoo of a sundered valentine with the tagline Heart Breaker on her right buttock and a tiny hairless ole just left of her anus.

David Foster Wallace

Tattoo, Queens, Valentine

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I was never the sort of child who believed in "monsters under the bed" or vampires, or who needed a night-light in his bedroom; on the contrary, my father...once laughingly told my mother that he thought I might suffer from a type of benign psychosis called "antiparanoia," in which I seemed to believe that I was the object of an intricate universal conspiracy to make me so happy I could hardly stand it.

David Foster Wallace

Mother, Children, Father

"All That" by David Foster Wallace, www.newyorker.com. December 14, 2009.

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There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration.

David Foster Wallace

Frustration, Boredom, Adults

"Ten Best Commencement Speeches: See A List, Take The Poll" by Katharine Zaleski, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 17, 2009.

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Like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist', i.e., somebody whose adult job was original and creative instead of tedious and dronelike.

David Foster Wallace

Jobs, Writing, Artist

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Latest quotes from interviews

"Although the only way that I'm well known at Illinois State is that I am the "grammar Nazi." And so any student whose deployment of a semi-colon is not absolutely Mozart-esque knows that they're going to get a C in my class, and so my classes tend to have like four students in them. It's really a lot of fun."

- David Foster Wallace,

blankonblank.org, added Dec 21, 2015

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David Foster Wallace

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Born: February 21, 1962
Died: September 12, 2008
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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