David Foster Wallace: Trending quotes (page 7)

“I believe I want adult sanity, which seems to me the only unalloyed form of heroism available today.”

“Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden.”

“There is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”

“Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.”

“My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it.”

“For those who've never experienced a sunrise in the rural midwest, it's roughly as soft and romantic as someone's abruptly hitting the lights in a dark room.”

“It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again.”

“Like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist', i. e., somebody whose adult job was original and creative instead of tedious and dronelike.”

“And when he came to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.”

“I cannot say what color Lenore Beadsman’s eyes are; I cannot look at them; they are the sun to me.”

“So yo then man what's your story?”

“She wanted only tall smooth bottles whose labels spoke of Proof.”

“So which is the lie? Hard or soft? Silence or time?”

“He said she went around with her feelings out in front of her with an arm around the feelings' windpipe and a Glock 9mm. to the feelings' temple like a terrorist with a hostage, daring you to shoot.”

“Be on guard. The road widens, and many of the detours are seductive.”

“[T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.”

“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.”

“They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier.”

“Abstruse dullness is actually a much more effective shield than is secrecy. For the great disadvantage of secrecy is that it’s interesting.”