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I think the only thing for me, the tricky thing with the footnotes, is that they are an irritant, and they require a little extra work, and so they either have to be really germane or they have to be kind of fun to read.

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
Little
Tricky
Thing
Extra
Work
Extras
Kind
Require
Really
Fun
Germane
Think
Either
Irritant
Thinking
Read
Irritants
Littles
Footnotes

More quotes by David Foster Wallace

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The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.
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Mediocrity is contextual.
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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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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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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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Stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.
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She had a brainy girls discomfort about her own beauty and its effects on folks.
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The sound of wind had become, for me, silence. When it went away, I was left with the squeak of the blood in my head and the aural glitter of all those little eardrum hairs quivering like a drunk in withdrawal.
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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.
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Do this: hate him for me after I die. I beg you. Dying request.
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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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There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us - these are just the hazards of being free.
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We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.
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Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.
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The integrity of my sleep has been forever compromised, sir.
David Foster Wallace
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American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret.
David Foster Wallace
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I cannot say what color Lenore Beadsman’s eyes are I cannot look at them they are the sun to me.
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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?
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The point of books is to combat loneliness.
David Foster Wallace
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I don't want to hurt myself. I want to stop hurting.
David Foster Wallace