Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still. David Foster Wallace More Quotes by David Foster Wallace More Quotes From David Foster Wallace Dostoevski informs everybody; or he ought to. David Foster Wallace ought Boo, I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants or vampires or whatever. I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away. David Foster Wallace real liars believe And when he came to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out. David Foster Wallace rain sky beach She had a brainy girls discomfort about her own beauty and its effects on folks. David Foster Wallace discomfort folks girl Footnote: 79) The anchor is gigantic and must weigh a hundred tons, and -- delightfully -- it really is anchor-shaped, i.e. the same shape as anchors in tattoos. David Foster Wallace anchors tattoo shapes You are what you love. No? You are, completely and only, what you would die for without, as you say, the thinking twice. David Foster Wallace what-you-love dies thinking Psychotics, say what you want about them, tend to make the first move. David Foster Wallace dating want moving It's all very confusing. I think I'm very honest and candid, but I'm also proud of how honest and candid I am -- so where does that put me? David Foster Wallace confusing doe thinking Say the whole point of love is to try to get your fingers through the holes in the lover's mask. To get some kind of hold on the mask, and who cares how you do it. David Foster Wallace who-cares trying love-is Mediocrity is contextual. David Foster Wallace mediocrity I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard. David Foster Wallace crush selfish simple Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency. David Foster Wallace generations doe way When a solipsist dies ... everything goes with him. David Foster Wallace solipsism dies Words and a book and a belief that the world is words. David Foster Wallace belief book world A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane. David Foster Wallace airplane novelists writing The Sophists had this idea: Forget this idea of what's true or not—what you want to do is rhetoric; you want to be able to persuade the audience and have the audience think you're smart and cool. And Socrates and Plato, basically their whole idea is, "Bullshit. There is such a thing as truth, and it's not all just how to say what you say so that you get a good job or get laid, or whatever it is people think they want. David Foster Wallace smart plato jobs ...the sun would leave my sky if I couldn't assume you'd simply come and tell me you were sad. David Foster Wallace assuming sun sky What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love? David Foster Wallace temples what-if choices The 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 banquet requires that we see also ourselves sitting there starving-seeing ourselves clearly, even for a moment, is shattering. We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves. David Foster Wallace sitting dream people We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life "outside" the story changes the story. David Foster Wallace reader stories ideas
