Quotes from David Foster Wallace

It looks like you can write a minimalist piece without much bleeding. And you can. But not a good one.

The man who knows his limitations, has none.

So yo then man what's your story?

Tell them there are no holes for your fingers in the masks of men. Tell them how could you ever even hope to love what you can't grab onto.

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies.

I had four hundred thousand pages of continental philosophy and lit theory in my head. And by God, I was going to use it to prove to him that I was smarter than he was.

In fact, the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians makes us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard even to name, much less talk about.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

It's in the democratic citizen's nature to be like a leaf that doesn't believe in the tree it's part of.

The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness—awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."

Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking?

Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?

This is nourishing, redemptive we become less alone inside.

The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, 'then' what do we do?

Make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.

Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?" "I give." "You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.

Everything I've ever let go of has claw marks on it.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it's just words.