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
Writing
Clock
Time
Exist
Close
Fiction
Takes
Probably
Hours
Ever
Immortal

More quotes by David Foster Wallace

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If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default-setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying.
David Foster Wallace
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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
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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
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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.
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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Dieting makes me want to murder everyone around me.
David Foster Wallace
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The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.
David Foster Wallace
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Mary had a little lamb, its fleece electrostatic / And everywhere Mary went, the lights became erratic.
David Foster Wallace
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Truly decent, innocent people can be taxing to be around.
David Foster Wallace
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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
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Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.
David Foster Wallace
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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.
David Foster Wallace
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If some people read my fiction and see it as fundamentally about philosophical ideas, what it probably means is that these are pieces where the characters are not as alive and interesting as I meant them to be.
David Foster Wallace
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Say the whole point of love is to try to get your fingers through the holes in the lover's mask. To get some kind of hold on the mask, and who cares how you do it.
David Foster Wallace
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I find in myself a need to get very away.
David Foster Wallace
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Hear this or not, as you will. Learn it now, or later -- the world has time. Routine, repetition, tedium, monotony, ephemeracy, inconsequence, abstraction, disorder, boredom, angst, ennui -- these are the true hero's enemies, and make no mistake, they are fearsome indeed. For they are real.
David Foster Wallace
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Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est (They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier).
David Foster Wallace
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...Genuine pathological openness is about as seductive as Tourette's Syndrome.
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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I don't want to hurt myself. I want to stop hurting.
David Foster Wallace