Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.
("Infinite Jest")
More Quotes from David Foster Wallace:
Be a Student of the Game. Like most cliches of sport, this is profound. You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. Peers who fizzle or blow up or fall down, run away, disappear from the monthly rankings, drop off the circuit.David Foster Wallace
The jet's movement and trail seem incisionish, as if white meat behind the blue were exposed and widening in the wake of the blade.
David Foster Wallace
Hal Incandenza has an almost obsessive dislike for deLint, whom he tells Mario he sometimes cannot quite believe is even real, and tries to get to the side of, to see whether deLint has a true z coordinate or is just a cutout or projection.
David Foster Wallace
The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.
David Foster Wallace
That everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.
David Foster Wallace
We're kind of wishing some parents would come back. And of course we're uneasy about the fact that we wish they'd come back - I mean, what's wrong with us?
David Foster Wallace
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Cardinal Richelieu
In the Russian experience, although the Russian state is oppressive, it is their state, it is part of their fabric, and so the relation between Russian citizens and their state is complicated.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
The strong man is strongest when alone.
Friedrich Schiller