David Foster WallacePostmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming… ▶361TimeTruth
David Foster WallaceThe really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over… ▶372HumanityTime
David Foster WallaceIf your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.372Humor
David Foster Wallacelife's endless war against the self you cannot live without.372Life
David Foster WallaceThe key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word… ▶361LifePhilosophy
David Foster WallaceThe lives of most people are small tight pallid and sad, more to be mourned than their deaths. We starve at the banquet: We cannot see that there is a banquet because seeing the b… ▶373DeathHumanitySadness
David Foster WallaceThe integrity of my sleep has been forever compromised, sir. ✨ David Foster Wallace (2011). Infinite Jest, p.18, Hachette UK373Humor
David Foster WallaceMediocrity is contextual.363Time
David Foster WallaceWhen they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the ve… ▶374HumorReadingTime
David Foster WallaceMost of the writers I know are weird hybrids. There's a strong streak of egomania coupled with extreme shyness. Writing's kind of like exhibitionism in private. And there's also a… ▶352Humanity
David Foster WallaceMy own terror of appearing sentimental is so strong that I’ve decided to fight against it, some; but the terror is still there. . . . Do you identify with a distaste/fear about se… ▶352Time
David Foster WallaceBoth destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing importan… ▶375LifePhilosophyPolitics
David Foster WallaceI'm not afraid of new things. I'm just afraid of feeling alone even when there's somebody else there. I'm afraid of feeling bad. Maybe that's selfish, but it's the way I feel. 375Politics
David Foster WallaceDoes somebody have an explanation why there's human flesh on the hall window upstairs?364Humanity
David Foster WallaceThat what appears to be egoism so often isn't.364Reflection
David Foster WallaceI'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.364Time
David Foster WallaceSome 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 … ▶365Love
David Foster WallaceI think it's easy to stop smoking; it's just hard not to commit a felony after you stop.343Thought
David Foster WallaceIt took years after I’d graduated from Amherst to realize that people were actually far more complicated and interesting than books, that almost everyone else suffered the same se… ▶365HumanityReading
David Foster WallaceTalent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever. ✨ David Foster Wallace (2009). Infinite Jest, p.208, Hachette UK376Sadness
David Foster WallaceCertain sincerely devout and spiritually advanced people believe that the God of their understanding helps them find parking places and gives them advice on Mass. Lottery numbers.… ▶365Humanity
David Foster WallaceThis might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants. ✨ Interview With… ▶354Death
David Foster WallacePleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se.354Life
David Foster WallaceIt can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art. ✨ The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993.321Reading
David Foster WallaceIt feels intensely twisted to see reigning industry queen Jenna Jameson chilling out at the Vivid booth in Jordaches and a latex bustier and to know already that she has a tattoo … ▶344LoveReading
David Foster WallaceUnder fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this … ▶377Reading
David Foster WallaceShe had a brainy girls discomfort about her own beauty and its effects on folks. ✨ David Foster Wallace (2011). Infinite Jest, p.497, Hachette UK311Thought
David Foster WallaceWe are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.366Death
David Foster WallaceI'm screaming for help and everybody's acting as if I'm singing Ethel Merman covers.366Reading
David Foster WallaceI never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. T… ▶333Time
