Do not underestimate objects. David Foster Wallace More Quotes by David Foster Wallace More Quotes From David Foster Wallace So yo then man what's your story? David Foster Wallace storiesmen She wanted only tall smooth bottles whose labels spoke of Proof. David Foster Wallace smoothlabelsbottles He knew what the Beats know and what the great tennis player knows, son: learn to do nothing, with your whole head and body, and everything will be done by what's around you. David Foster Wallace tennisplayerson For those who've never experienced a sunrise in the rural midwest, it's roughly as soft and romantic as someone's abruptly hitting the lights in a dark room. David Foster Wallace sunriselightdark I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it. David Foster Wallace readingbookthinking I cannot say what color Lenore Beadsman’s eyes are; I cannot look at them; they are the sun to me. David Foster Wallace coloreyesun There are secrets within secrets, though--always. David Foster Wallace secret every failure is also a victory. David Foster Wallace victory The truth is that the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theatre. The grand gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the external foe, the climactic battle whose outcome resolves all--all designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify and audience. Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality--there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand?Here is the truth--actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested. David Foster Wallace childhoodchoicesreal To experience commitment as the loss of options, a type of death, the death of childhood's limitless possibility, of the flattery of choice without duress-this will happen, mark me. Childhood's end. David Foster Wallace choiceslosscommitment Who would die for this chance to be fed this death of pleasure with spoons, in their warm homes, alone, unmoving? David Foster Wallace spoonschancehome The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism. David Foster Wallace assumptiondiseaseworld The individual's right to pursue his own vision of the best ration of pleasure to pain: utterly sacrosanct. David Foster Wallace pleasurevisionpain [T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help. David Foster Wallace stupidtryingneeds When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on. David Foster Wallace juggernautwritingtrying The integrity of my sleep has been forever compromised, sir. David Foster Wallace foreversleepintegrity Molly Notkin often confides on the phone to Joelle van Dyne about the one tormented love of Nokin's life thus far, an erotically circumscribed G.W. Pabst scholar at New York University tortured by the neurotic compulsion that there are only a finite number of erections possible in the world at any one time and that his tumescence means e.g. the detumescence of some perhaps more deserving or tortured Third World sorghum farmer. David Foster Wallace new-yorknumbersmean No single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable. David Foster Wallace infinite-jestpowerfulinspirational The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror. David Foster Wallace depressed-personessentialspain If Realism called it like it saw it, Metafiction simply called it as it saw itself seeing itself see it. David Foster Wallace realismseeingsaws
