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Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

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
Else
Jest
Different
Unspoken
Way
Identical
Deep
Everybody
Secret
Belief
Everyone
Bipolar

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I don't want to hurt myself. I want to stop hurting.
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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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It’s a very American illness, the idea of giving yourself away entirely to the idea of working in order to achieve some sort of brass ring that usually involves people feeling some way about you – I mean, people wonder why we walk around feeling alienated and lonely and stressed out.
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Does somebody have an explanation why there's human flesh on the hall window upstairs?
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What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of what they called daydreaming often required more effort and concentration than it would have taken simply to listen in class. Laziness is not the issue. It is just not the work dictated by the administration.
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Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have much harder, more tedious or painful lives than I do, overall.
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We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life outside the story changes the story.
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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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Probably the most dangerous thing about college education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract arguments inside my head instead of simply paying attention to what's going on right in front of me. TC mark
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Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se.
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The man who knows his limitations, has none.
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We all suffer alone in the real world. True empathy's impossible. But if a piece of fiction can alow us imaginatively to identify with a character's pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with their own. This is nourishing, redemptive we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple.
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I'd tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear
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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.
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One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner either.
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Good writing isn’t a science. It’s an art, and the horizon is infinite. You can always get better.
David Foster Wallace
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Lucky people develop a relationship with a certain kind of art that becomes spiritual, almost religious, and doesn’t mean, you know, church stuff, but it means you’re just never the same.
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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.
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The severing of an established connection is exponentially more painful than the rejection of an attempted connection.
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Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.
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