We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met? David Foster Wallace More Quotes by David Foster Wallace More Quotes From David Foster Wallace This is not a matter of virtue-it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. David Foster Wallace lensesselfmatter At root, vulgar just means popular on a mass scale. It is the semantic opposite of pretentious or snobby. It is humility with a comb-over. It is Nielsen ratings and Barnum's axiom and the real bottom line. It is big, big business. David Foster Wallace humilityrealmean The entire ball game, in terms of both the exam and life, was what you gave attention to vs. what you willed yourself to not. David Foster Wallace ballsgamesattention It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most "familiarity" is meditated and delusive. David Foster Wallace remindingimportantway she committed suicide by putting her extremities down the garbage disposal-first one arm and then, kind of miraculously if you think about it, the other arm. David Foster Wallace garbage-disposalsuicidethinking I wasn't all that attracted to writing originally. I read a great deal. My parents read a great deal. I do know that as my interest in tennis waned, my interest in academics increased. I mean, I started doing my homework in high school and discovering that it was somewhat fun. And then in college I barely even played on the team because just classes were much more interesting. David Foster Wallace teamwritingfun Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn't enough to make him great. If it were, Judith Krantz and John Grisham would be great fiction writers, and by any but the most commercial standards they're not even very good. David Foster Wallace would-bewritingfiction It’s a very American illness, the idea of giving yourself away entirely to the idea of working in order to achieve some sort of brass ring that usually involves people feeling some way about you – I mean, people wonder why we walk around feeling alienated and lonely and stressed out. David Foster Wallace lonelyordermean I felt, as I became a later and later bloomer, alienated not just from my own recalcitrant glabrous little body but in a way from the whole elemental exterior I'd come to see as my co-conspirator. David Foster Wallace bodylittlesway I have heard upscale adult U.S. citizens ask the ship's Guest Relations Desk whether snorkeling necessitates getting wet...I now know the precise mixocological difference between a Slippery Nipple and a fuzzy navel. David Foster Wallace shipsnipplesdifferences I just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art. David Foster Wallace meanartthinking I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art. David Foster Wallace ideasartthinking Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se. David Foster Wallace gdppleasureends Here is how to handle being a feral prodigy. David Foster Wallace prodigieshandle Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever ore power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. David Foster Wallace smartstupidfeelings This appetite to choose death by pleasure if it is available to choose - this appetite of your people unable to choose appetites, this is the death. David Foster Wallace appetitepleasurepeople It's probably hard to feel any sort of Romantic spiritual connection to nature when you have to make your living from it. David Foster Wallace connectionsspiritualfeels There's a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn't happen all the time. It's these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone—intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don't with other art. David Foster Wallace flameswayart Dr. Ambrose himself told Mark Nechtr...that the problem with young people, starting sometime in about the 1960s, is that they tend to live too intensely inside their own social moment, and thus tend to see all existence past age thirty or so as somehow postcoital. It's then that they'll relax, settle back, sad animals, to watch- and learn, as Ambrose himself said he learned from hard artistic and academic experience- that life instead of being rated a hard R, or even a soft R, actually rarely even makes it into distribution. Tends to be too slow. David Foster Wallace animalpeoplepast 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 horribleartistreal
