Quote

American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret.

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
Away
Suggest
Seems
Unlimited
Give
Prefer
Need
Various
Giving
Levels
Needs
Secret
People
American
Experience
Virtually

More quotes by David Foster Wallace

Image
This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.
David Foster Wallace
Image
I think the only thing for me, the tricky thing with the footnotes, is that they are an irritant, and they require a little extra work, and so they either have to be really germane or they have to be kind of fun to read.
David Foster Wallace
Image
The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.
David Foster Wallace
Image
I miss everyone. I can remember being young and feeling a thing and identifying it as homesickness, and then thinking well now that’s odd, isn’t it, because I was home, all the time. What on earth are we to make of that?
David Foster Wallace
Image
Dieting makes me want to murder everyone around me.
David Foster Wallace
Image
Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude - but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense.
David Foster Wallace
Image
The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the ‘Oh how banal.’
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
I do things like get in a taxi and say, The library, and step on it.
David Foster Wallace
Image
Do this: hate him for me after I die. I beg you. Dying request.
David Foster Wallace
Image
In the broadest possible sense, writing well means to communicate clearly and interestingly and in a way that feels alive to the reader. Where there’s some kind of relationship between the writer and the reader - even though it’s mediated by a kind of text - there’s an electricity about it.
David Foster Wallace
Image
Fiction is about what it is to be a human being.
David Foster Wallace
Image
In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.
David Foster Wallace
Image
I'm very bright, but I'm terrified of sounding like someone who thinks he's very bright-because those people are assholes.
David Foster Wallace
Image
Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly.
David Foster Wallace
Image
The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.
David Foster Wallace
Image
I find in myself a need to get very away.
David Foster Wallace
Image
The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates.
David Foster Wallace
Image
For me, boviscopophobia is an even stronger motive than semi-agoraphobia for staying on the ship when we're in port.
David Foster Wallace
Image
The fun of reading as an exchange between consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff we can't normally talk about.
David Foster Wallace