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I had, by thirteen, developed a sort of Taoist hubris about my ability to control via non-control.

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
Developed
Control
Sort
Ability
Persons
Taoist
Hubris
Thirteen

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I do things like get in a taxi and say, The library, and step on it.
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This diagnosis can be done in about two lines. It doesn't engage anybody.
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I'm very bright, but I'm terrified of sounding like someone who thinks he's very bright-because those people are assholes.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves. They've got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings.
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Fiction is about what it is to be a human being.
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It takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak.
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Do this: hate him for me after I die. I beg you. Dying request.
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I was trained mainly as a short story writer and that's how I started writing, but I've also become very interested in non-fiction, just because I got a couple of magazine jobs when I was really poor and needed the money and it turned out that non-fiction was much more interesting than I thought it was.
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Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off David Lynch is interested in the ear.
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I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today, of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it.
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Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.
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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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Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.
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I believe I want adult sanity, which seems to me the only unalloyed form of heroism available today.
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It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.
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