David Foster Wallace quotes

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

—  David Foster Wallace, book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

„… logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.“

—  David Foster Wallace, book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

„… it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak.“

—  David Foster Wallace, book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

„True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.“

—  David Foster Wallace, book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King

„Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.“

—  David Foster Wallace

An Interview by Larry McCaffery
Essays
Variant: I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

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

—  David Foster Wallace, book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest (1996)

„There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?“

—  David Foster Wallace

Source: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

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

—  David Foster Wallace, book Infinite Jest

Variant: That everyone is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else. That this isn't necessarily perverse.
Source: Infinite Jest (1996)

„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.“

—  David Foster Wallace

Essays
Source: Kenyon College Commencement Speech, April 21, 2005, published as This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.

„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.“

—  David Foster Wallace, book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

„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

„Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.“

—  David Foster Wallace, book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

„What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human […] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.“

—  David Foster Wallace, book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

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

—  David Foster Wallace, book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King (2011)

„It's weird to feel like you miss someone you're not even sure you know.“

—  David Foster Wallace, book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

„The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die.“

—  David Foster Wallace

„Whatever you get paid attention for is never what you think is most important about yourself.“

—  David Foster Wallace

„It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.“

—  David Foster Wallace, book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

„Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.“

—  David Foster Wallace