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All I'm saying is that it's shortsighted to blame TV. It's simply another symptom. TV didn't invent our aesthetic childishness here any more than the Manhattan Project invented aggression.

David Foster Wallace

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David Foster Wallace
Age: 45 †
Born: 1962
Born: February 21
Died: 2008
Died: February 12
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Ithica
New York
David Wallace
Projects
Manhattan
Simply
Symptoms
Saying
Invent
Another
Aggression
Didn
Aesthetic
Invented
Shortsighted
Project
Childishness
Blame
Symptom

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If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default-setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying.
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I have always tried to avoid talking to pretty girls, because pretty girls have a vicious effect on me in which every part of my brain is shut down except for the part that says unbelievably stupid things and the part that is aware that I am saying unbelievably stupid things.
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...the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.
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This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.
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I don't think writers are any smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their confusion.
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Say the whole point of love is to try to get your fingers through the holes in the lover's mask. To get some kind of hold on the mask, and who cares how you do it.
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So yo then man what's your story?
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...most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.
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You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
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For me, boviscopophobia is an even stronger motive than semi-agoraphobia for staying on the ship when we're in port.
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The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.
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The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.
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Almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it.
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Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride.
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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.
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People, unless they're paying attention, tend to confuse fanciness with intelligence or authority.
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Writing fiction takes me out of time. I sit down and the clock will not exist for me for a few hours. That’s probably as close to immortal as we’ll ever get.
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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.
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I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today, of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it.
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Footnote: 79) The anchor is gigantic and must weigh a hundred tons, and -- delightfully -- it really is anchor-shaped, i.e. the same shape as anchors in tattoos.
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