Explore Quotes by David Foster Wallace

The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.

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

In the broadest possible sense, writing well means to communicate clearly and interestingly and in a way that feels alive to the reader. Where there’s some kind of relationship between the writer and the reader - even though it’s mediated by a kind of text - there’s an electricity about it.

Lucky people develop a relationship with a certain kind of art that becomes spiritual, almost religious, and doesn’t mean, you know, church stuff, but it means you’re just never the same.

This diagnosis can be done in about two lines. It doesn't engage anybody.

For me, boviscopophobia is an even stronger motive than semi-agoraphobia for staying on the ship when we're in port.

The point of books is to combat loneliness.

Nothing brings you together like a common enemy.

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

Most of the writers I know are weird hybrids. There's a strong streak of egomania coupled with extreme shyness. Writing's kind of like exhibitionism in private. And there's also a strange loneliness, and a desire to have some kind of conversation with people, but not a real great ability to do it in person.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

Stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.

Look, man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?

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

I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is and also the most demanding. It requires body control, hand-eye coordination, quickness, flat-out speed, endurance, and that weird mix of caution and abandon we call courage. It also requires smarts. Just one single shot in one exchange in one point of a high-level match is a nightmare of mechanical variables.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

People, unless they're paying attention, tend to confuse fanciness with intelligence or authority.

Good writing isn’t a science. It’s an art, and the horizon is infinite. You can always get better.

There is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness.

Fiction, poetry, music...these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

Ideally, each piece of art's its own unique object, and its evaluation's always present-tense.