Quotes About Existence

David Foster Wallace

no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.

Two clocks, two ghosts, one square acre of hidden mirror.

a thing among things, its self's soul so much vapor aloft, falling as rain and then rising, the sun up and down like a yoyo.

God might regard the issue of whether you believe there's a God or not as fairly low on his/her/its list of things s/he/it's interested in re you.

Fiction's about what it is to be a human being.

Its emotional character … is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we associate with human agency —sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying— are not just unpleasant but literally horrible.

Existence and life break people in all kinds of awful fucking ways all the time.

For me, art that's alive and urgent is about what it is to be a human being.

God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I

Today's person spends way more time in front of screens, in florescent lit rooms, in cubicles being on one end of the other of an electronic data transfer . . . What is it to be human and alive and exercise your humanity in that kind of exchange?

I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I, Boo.

And then but so what's the difference between tennis and suicide, life and death, the game and its own end?

The reality is that dying isn't bad, but it takes forever.

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.

Forever Overhead No time is passing outside you at all. It is amazing. The late ballet below is slow motion, the overbroad movements of mimes in blue jelly. If you wanted you could really stay here forever, vibrating inside so fast you float motionless in time, like a bee over something sweet.

The truth is that there's no difference between a life and a story? But a life pretends to be something more? But it really isn't more? LENORE:

Some days you can almost see Hal like flit in and out of a match, like some part of him leaves and hovers and then comes back.

Ci sono due pesci che nuotano e a un certo punto incontrano un pesce anziano che va nella direzione opposta, fa un cenno di saluto e dice: Salve, ragazzi. Com'è l'acqua? I due pesci giovani nuotano un altro po', poi uno guarda l'altro e fa Che cavolo è l'acqua?».

Mettiamo che Nonna mi abbia detto in maniera parecchio convincente che tutto ciò che davvero esiste della mia vita è limitato a quello che se ne può raccontare. Be', credo che non sia esattamente che la vita va raccontata anziché vissuta; è piuttosto che la vita è il suo racconto, e che in me non c'è niente che non sia o raccontato o raccontabile. Ma se è davvero così, allora che differenza c'è, perché vivere?

The jokes theory was there's no audience and no director and no stage or set because, The Mad Stork and his cronies argued, in Reality there are none of these things. And the protagonist doesn't know he's the protagonist in a Found Drama because in Reality nobody thinks they're in any sort of Drama.

The joke's theory was there's no audience and no director and no stage or set because, The Mad Stork and his cronies argued, in Reality there are none of these things. And the protagonist doesn't know he's the protagonist in a Found Drama because in Reality nobody thinks they're in any sort of Drama.

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace