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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

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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
Like
Study
Spine
Reading
Drives
Read
Library
Everything
Wear
Book
Havens
Spines
Things
Haven
Taxi
Think
Step
Libraries
Thinking
Steps
Consume

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Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.
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I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I.
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I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.
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Some words have to be explicitly uttered, Lenore. Only by actually uttering certain words does one really DO what one SAYS. 'Love' is one of those words, performative words. Some words can literally make things real.
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The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.
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Mary had a little lamb, its fleece electrostatic / And everywhere Mary went, the lights became erratic.
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It's in the democratic citizen's nature to be like a leaf that doesn't believe in the tree it's part of.
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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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I'd like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time, instead of having to go back in my head and enjoy them.
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Does somebody have an explanation why there's human flesh on the hall window upstairs?
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You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
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the psychological need to believe that others take you as seriously as you take yourself. There is nothing particularly wrong with it, as psychological needs go, but yet of course we should always remember that a deep need for anything from other people makes us easy pickings.
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No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.
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Most of us will still take nihilism over neanderthalism.
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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.
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There is no hatred in my love for you. Only a sadness I feel all the more strongly for my inability to explain or describe it.
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We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.
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...the sun would leave my sky if I couldn't assume you'd simply come and tell me you were sad.
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every failure is also a victory.
David Foster Wallace
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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?
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