David Foster Wallace quotes - page 6

Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se. (David Foster Wallace)
I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader. View quote
David Foster Wallace
Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes. View quote
David Foster Wallace
One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism. View quote
David Foster Wallace
Psychotics, say what you want about them, tend to make the first move. View quote
David Foster Wallace
He said she went around with her feelings out in front of her with an arm around the feelings' windpipe and a Glock 9mm. to the feelings' temple like a terrorist with a hostage, daring you to shoot. View quote
David Foster Wallace
When a solipsist dies ... everything goes with him. View quote
David Foster Wallace
I just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art. View quote
David Foster Wallace
I believe I want adult sanity, which seems to me the only unalloyed form of heroism available today. View quote
David Foster Wallace
Worship your body, beauty, and sexual allure and you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. View quote
David Foster Wallace
The integrity of my sleep has been forever compromised, sir. (David Foster Wallace)
Fiction's about what it is to be a human being. View quote
David Foster Wallace
Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever. View quote
David Foster Wallace
This diagnosis can be done in about two lines. It doesn't engage anybody. View quote
David Foster Wallace
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. View quote
David Foster Wallace
To be, in a word, unborable.... It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish. View quote
David Foster Wallace
I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I... View quote
David Foster Wallace
It's weird to feel like you miss someone you're not even sure you know. View quote
David Foster Wallace
... it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak. View quote
David Foster Wallace
What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic. View quote
David Foster Wallace
... That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable. (David Foster Wallace)
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. View quote
David Foster Wallace
The sun like a sneaky keyhole view of hell. View quote
David Foster Wallace
... most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking. View quote
David Foster Wallace
... the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. View quote
David Foster Wallace