Quote

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

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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
Ever
Immortal
Writing
Clock
Time
Exist
Close
Fiction
Takes
Probably
Hours

More quotes by David Foster Wallace

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Here is how to handle being a feral prodigy.
David Foster Wallace
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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.
David Foster Wallace
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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
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We will, of course, without hesitation use art to parody, ridicule, debunk, or criticize ideologies.
David Foster Wallace
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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.
David Foster Wallace
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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
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The point of books is to combat loneliness.
David Foster Wallace
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Real leaders are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.
David Foster Wallace
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Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se.
David Foster Wallace
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You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster Wallace
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Worship your body, beauty, and sexual allure and you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.
David Foster Wallace
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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
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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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Dieting makes me want to murder everyone around me.
David Foster Wallace
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She wanted only tall smooth bottles whose labels spoke of Proof.
David Foster Wallace
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It's like a fugue of evaded responsibility.
David Foster Wallace
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Whatever you get paid attention for is never what you think is most important about yourself.
David Foster Wallace
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It's probably hard to feel any sort of Romantic spiritual connection to nature when you have to make your living from it.
David Foster Wallace
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....there is an ending [to Infinite Jest] as far as I'm concerned. Certain kind of parallel lines are supposed to start converging in such a way that an end can be projected by the reader somewhere beyond the right frame. If no such convergence or projection occured to you, then the book's failed for you.
David Foster Wallace
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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