Quotes by David Foster Wallace

About David Foster Wallace:

David Foster Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.

David Foster Wallace

It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.

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.

David Foster Wallace

Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride.

David Foster Wallace

To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared about how sappy this'll look in print, saying this.

David Foster Wallace

We're kind of wishing some parents would come back. And of course we're uneasy about the fact that we wish they'd come back - I mean, what's wrong with us?

David Foster Wallace

I think it's easy to stop smoking; it's just hard not to commit a felony after you stop.

David Foster Wallace

For me, art that's alive and urgent is about what it is to be a human being.

David Foster Wallace

God, what a ghastly enterprise to be in, though--and what an odd way to achieve success. I'm an exhibitionist who wants to hide, but is unsuccessful at hiding; therefore, somehow I succeed.

David Foster Wallace

It's not what you lift, it's where you carry it.

David Foster Wallace

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain ...

David Foster Wallace

Worship your body, beauty, and sexual allure and you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

David Foster Wallace

You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in...it's actually kind of tragic because you s...

David Foster Wallace

I guess a bit part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves.

David Foster Wallace

Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a bored...

David Foster Wallace

What if there was something essentially wrong with Claude Sylvanshine that wasn't wrong with other people? What if he was simple ill-suited, the way some people are born without limbs or certain organs? The neurology of failure. What if he was simply...

David Foster Wallace

This is the kind of paradox, I think, of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now, and probably also a Western European, is that there are things we know are right, and good, and would be better for us to do, but constantly it's like...

David Foster Wallace

I think I was very often bored as a child, but boredom is not what I knew it as—what I knew was that I worried a lot

David Foster Wallace

You get to decide what to worship.

David Foster Wallace

Commercial comedy's often set up to feature an ironist making devastating sport of someone who's naive or sentimental or pretentious or pompous.

David Foster Wallace

I 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. They have forgotten.

David Foster Wallace

Author Bio

  • NameDavid Foster Wallace
  • DescriptionFiction writer, essayist
  • BornFebruary 21, 1962
  • DiedSeptember 12, 2008
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist; Essayist
  • WorksInfinite Jest; The Pale King; A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again; Brief Interviews With Hideous Men
  • AwardsMacArthur Fellows Program