David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallacewas an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist, as well as a professor of English and creative writing. Wallace's 1996 novel Infinite Jest was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth21 February 1962
CountryUnited States of America
David Foster Wallace quotes about
parent doubt adults
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.
seductive tourettes genuine
...Genuine pathological openness is about as seductive as Tourette's Syndrome.
guarantees infinite-jest logical
...logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.
thinking different made
The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die.
disease world assumption
The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism.
integrity sleep forever
The integrity of my sleep has been forever compromised, sir.
expectations forever talent
Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.
secret
There are secrets within secrets, though--always.
hypocrisy splits irony
The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates.
eye color sun
I cannot say what color Lenore Beadsman’s eyes are; I cannot look at them; they are the sun to me.
teacher taken class
What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of what they called daydreaming often required more effort and concentration than it would have taken simply to listen in class. Laziness is not the issue. It is just not the work dictated by the administration.
bottles labels smooth
She wanted only tall smooth bottles whose labels spoke of Proof.
saws realism ifs
If Realism called it like it saw it, Metafiction simply called it as it saw itself seeing itself see it.
airplane writing next
A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane.