Quote

Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.

David Foster Wallace

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Like
Whether
North
Less
Pursuit
Certain
Generation
Exceptionally
Doe
Americans
Pursuits
Hard
Objects
Tends
Feels
Generations
Tendency
Even
Ways
Devoted
Way
Sure
Tendencies

More quotes by David Foster Wallace

Image
TV's real agenda is to be liked, because if you like what you're seeing, you'll stay tuned. TV is completely unabashed about this it's its sole raison.
David Foster Wallace
Image
Stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.
David Foster Wallace
Image
My worst character flaw that I'm conscious of is that I tend to think my way into circles instead of resolving anything. It's paralyzing and boring for people around me.
David Foster Wallace
Image
Psychotics, say what you want about them, tend to make the first move.
David Foster Wallace
Image
One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner either.
David Foster Wallace
Image
I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today, of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it.
David Foster Wallace
Image
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says 'Morning, boys. How's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes 'What the hell is water?'
David Foster Wallace
Image
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
Image
I'm not afraid of new things. I'm just afraid of feeling alone even when there's somebody else there. I'm afraid of feeling bad. Maybe that's selfish, but it's the way I feel.
David Foster Wallace
Image
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.
David Foster Wallace
Image
Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
David Foster Wallace
Image
...the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.
David Foster Wallace
Image
I do things like get in a taxi and say, The library, and step on it.
David Foster Wallace
Image
I cannot say what color Lenore Beadsman’s eyes are I cannot look at them they are the sun to me.
David Foster Wallace
Image
There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us - these are just the hazards of being free.
David Foster Wallace
Image
I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.
David Foster Wallace
Image
The way I think about things and experience things is not particularly linear, and it's not orderly, and it's not pyramidical, and there are a lot of loops.
David Foster Wallace
Image
The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, 'then' what do we do?
David Foster Wallace
Image
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
Image
No single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.
David Foster Wallace