The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, 'then' what do we do?
David Foster Wallace
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES Irony and cynicism were just what the U.S. hypocrisy of the fifties and sixties called for. That’s... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE If we all look at life we think how nice, then we look at death and everybody goes oh you can say th... GARY F EVANS... If you love someone you must set them free like the wind and give them the respect they deserve.If y... GARY F EVANS... A couple of customers interrupted [...] who wanted to know if we had some YA book about ants and ali... SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be ... But i expect ... THOMAS HARRIS I think sometimes there is no right thing. ROSAMUND HODGE We may not get to choose how we die, but we can chose how we live. The universe may for... SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON Dreams are hopeful because they exist as pure possibility. Unlike memories, which are fossils, long ... SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON Focus on your work. Do what you're great at. Don't compare yourself to others and or waste time crit... GERMANY KENT Everyone is the Umbrella Man and he is everyone. Every cough, sneeze, smile and wave means both ever... CRAIG CLEVENGER 28. Feelings are neither right nor wrong. It's what you do with them that causes the problems. JAMES C. DOBSON Because you can only die once but you can suffer forever. SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON Are you taking us to the beach?" - Dan Cahill JUDE WATSON Let's head out to the ruins." - Dan Cahill ROLAND SMITH Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. The future belongs to all who, refusing to look back at the past move ahead with the clock as it tic... ODO SIMON AGBO Stand for something. Make your life mean something. Start where you are with what you have. You are ... GERMANY KENT Beauty is the light within. Only when you see the light within yourself will others see it in you. F. JOHNSON Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good it is to control the mind.... GAUTAMA BUDDHA We have tears in our eyes As we wave our goodbyes, We so loved being with you, we three. ROALD DAHL I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made ... RALPH WALDO EMERSON It looks ancient," - Amy Cahill JUDE WATSON Whether you're beginning with the foundation or you're finishing off the second story...the purposef... JOHN WAIRE The words you can’t find, you borrow. We read to know we’re not alone. We read because w... GABRIELLE ZEVIN Stephen King is Cervantes compared with David Foster Wallace. We have no standards left. HAROLD BLOOM So, tomorrow, I'm leaving. And I'm not going to let that happen again with anyone else. I'm going to... STEPHEN CHBOSKY So. I should just give up now?" she asked mildly. "Just let him spiral down into madness until the N... ROBIN HOBB It SMELLS ancient," - Dan Cahill JUDE WATSON Palm trees were fanned by a warm, light breeze, and they rolled down their windows to smell the sea. JUDE WATSON I thought that I was the Warrior and Cersei was the Maid, but all the time she was the Stranger, ... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say that I've read very little of David Foster Wallace's ... BEN FOUNTAIN First you have to learn the rules of the game, then you have to know the game better than anyone els... APURVA GAGLANI I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose the Audience are vu... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Writers such as Richard Powers and the late David Foster Wallace have shown the path to a newer gene... GILES FODEN David Foster Wallace, in my opinion, is one of the greatest writers we've ever had, certainly in... JOHN KRASINSKI Someone once said: "We do not make friends, we recognize them." And you'll know who they are because... KEN NIIMURA Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an... LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y... THEHEALTHFOODGURU The art of writing is what you get to do once to do become familiar with the craft. ELIZABETH GEORGE What is wrong is wrong and what is right is right. If it is therefore wrong to do what is wrong, the... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH It was because they were two parts of a whole. He did not belong to her. And she did not belong to h... RENEE AHDIEH Cease with the displays of false modesty. The entire palace knows about it." A feeling of warmt... RENEE AHDIEH Do you know why I adore roses?" Shahrzad untied the knot of his tikka sash with deliberate slowness.... RENEE AHDIEH Where were you?" Shahrzad tried to control the tremor in her voice. "Not where I should have b... RENEE AHDIEH As always. As ever. As a rose to the sun. RENEE AHDIEH until we do what has not yet been done, what has not been done shall remain undone ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH When the enemy is relaxed, make them toil. When full, starve them. When settled, make them move. SUN TZU The problem isn't finding out where you are gonna go-its figuring out what you are gonna do once you... NICHOLAS SPARKS Once you're involved in a business, it's part of what you do. It's the way you are. BEN ELLIOT Your life today is the result of a series of decisions you made that have caused you to arrive where... CHRIS PRENTISS A strong personal philosophy does more than sustain us through the tragedies of life. It also stains... CHRIS PRENTISS The answers are never "out there." All the answers are "in there," inside you, waiting to be discove... CHRIS PRENTISS The warm sound of her laughter stole through Khalid's skin, heating the coldest reaches of his soul. RENEE AHDIEH When we look it is always forward ,but if we did not think of the past at all we would not be able t... GARY F EVANS... The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense. JIM HARRISON What matters is the one thing I do know for certain: God is with me. CRAIG GROESCHEL Millions of people acknowledge today that they do not know the meaning of life. JAMES C. DOBSON We are at once the problem and the only possible solution to the problem. MICHAEL POLLAN The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a... JEANETTE CORON One way or another, we all fight for what we believe in. Doesn't that give us some common ground? TOM CLANCY, 'THE CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN' Forever is a long long time and time has a way of changing things WALT DISNEY COMPANY When we put LIVE backwards it spells EVIL, interesting how one word can have two totally opposing me... GARY F EVANS... I love you." she whispered into the rough wool of his sweater. L.J. SMITH And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three,... MONTY PYTHON I make mistakes. That's what I do. I speak without thinking, I act without knowing. I d... CANDACE BUSHNELL Then that's what the Northern Lights are. All the lives that we're not living. ADI ALSAID In life the only things that you see are things that you are projecting, and life presents you with ... OSHO Name the fears that are holding you back. It's the equivalent of flooding the boogeyman with light. GINA GREENLEE Once you acknowledge that human brains are basically made of atoms and acknowledge that atoms are go... JAAN TALLINN Ongea unachoweza kutenda. ENOCK MAREGESI We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth ha... L.M. MONTGOMERY Once I've ascertained that I'm safe and I'm with a director who is taking care of me, th... JULIANNE MOORE The young gentlemen who came calling seemed especially puzzling. They sat in their velvet shirts and... PATRICIA A. MCKILLIP Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is ... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Once you understand that Goliath is much weaker than you think he is, and David has superior technol... MALCOLM GLADWELL The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. W.E.B. DU BOIS Everyone always says how I'm so smart, but they don't know what it's like being me. always feeling l... SUSANE COLASANTI Success goes with you when you go an extra mile. NAZIM AMBALATH I love rules and I love following them, unless that rule is stupid. ANNA KENDRICK Supongo que ser tímido significa básicamente estar absorbido por uno mismo hasta el punto de que s... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE We have to make a determination of what the minimum standards are for police, fire and emergency ser... WARREN RUDMAN Don't you think people make their own choices in life?' 'They do, but in many cases their... FUMINORI NAKAMURA Percy was getting tired of water. If he said that aloud, he would probably get kicked out of Po... RICK RIORDAN What you need to learn how to do is analyze situations and do differential diagnoses and understand ... LEROY HOOD Clearly, unless the Lord chooses to explain Himself to us, which He does not often do, His motivatio... JAMES C. DOBSON Everyone gets dumped and everyone gets hurt and there's karma to love in regards to what you'... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS My dad's quite a conservative person, and he brought me up to be very questioning of the commerc... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I don't think she's a lesbian. I think she just ran out of men. [Charlotte] SEX AND THE CITY When you are with the wrong person, who doesn't really love you, all you want is to be adored. I... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I really like the look of the 1950s, lots of suburban Americana influences. I'm 5'4', so... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I am very curvy, so the vintage stores suit me better than most designers. I just can't seem to ... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I have quite a lot of plastic sunglasses. It's just a nice accessory, it adds a final thing, and... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I lived in Greece for about four years of my life, and living there had a huge impact on my life gro... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I love natural beauty, and I think it's your best look, but I think makeup as an artist is so tr... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I think celebrity culture and sexuality in pop music is really important, but I want there to be an ... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I'm not really part of that 'L.A. thing' or that celebrity culture. I'm more like so... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS This obsession with celebrity culture is really unhealthy. I don't want to live my life like tha... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS Even when I see a beautiful woman, I think, 'Aw, her life must be amazing.' Everyone does it... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS Blonde symbolises sexuality and power - it holds very different connotations. The archetypal star ha... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS
More David Foster Wallace
Nothing brings you together like a common enemy. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It looks like you can write a minimalist piece without much bleeding. And you can. But not a good on... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer c... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?" DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The great myth is that the bad ones don't last long. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a p... 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DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Because of the way human beings relate to narrative, we tend to identify with those characters we fi... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE shall I spend much of your time pointing out the degree to which televisual values influence the con... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE One of the few things I still miss from my Midwest childhood was this weird, deluded but unshakable ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch's Laura's muddy bothness is that it r... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ....basically the sort of guy who looks entirely at home in sockless white loafers and a mint-green ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE AN ACADEMIC DEFINITION of Lynchian might be that the term "refers to a particular kind of irony wher... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I have pointed rhythmically at the ceiling to the two-four beat of the same disco music I hated poin... 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DAVID FOSTER WALLACE How can even the idea of rebellion against corporate culture stay meaningful when Chrysler Inc. adve... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off; David Lynch is intereste... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I have filled 3 Mead notebooks trying to figure out whether it was Them or Just Me. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please cou... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the diale... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ...we live in an era of terrible preoccupation with presentation and interpretation, one in which re... 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DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is more like confused... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I have always tried to avoid talking to pretty girls, because pretty girls have a vicious effect on ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE All I'm saying is that it's shortsighted to blame TV. It's simply another symptom. TV didn't invent ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE it turned out that there was something terribly stressful about visual telephone interfaces that had... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It is named the "Web" for good reason. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE You see parents as kind or unkind or happy or miserable or drunk or sober or great or near-great or ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE When a solipsist dies ... everything goes with him. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE But the young educated adults of the 90s -- who were, of course, the children of the same impassione... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal e... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ...most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I had kind of a midlife crisis at twenty which probably doesn’t augur well for my longevity DAVID FOSTER WALLACE An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like somebody who smiles warmly at you only ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It now lately sometimes seemed a black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Suppose I were to give you a key ring [...] with a hundred keys, and I were to tell you that one of ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Nel momento in cui riconosceva quello che c'era su una cartuccia provava la sensazione carica d'ansi... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Someone who had authority, or should have had authority and did not exercise authority. I do not kno... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Because we’ve been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It’s ultimately just about t... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Why do prostitutes when they get straight always try and get so prim? It's like long-repressed libra... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Every love story is a ghost story. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Ortho Stice played with a kind of rigid, liquid grace, like a panther in a back-brace. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE He said he didn’t think Lenore should go to the G.O.D. "Nobody ever finds anybody in a place ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Every two or three generations the world gets vastly different, and the context in which you have to... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological eras... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Trite though it (used to) sound, real sexuality is about our struggles to connect with one another, ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE This is the kind of paradox, I think, of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now, ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I am about art here, not simple reproduction. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE TV's 'real' agenda is to be 'liked,' because if you like what you're seeing,... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE And I was -- this is just how I was afraid you'd take it. I knew it, that you'd think this means you... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few yea... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Life is like tennis. Those who serve best usually win. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The real, many-veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great player's mind as he s... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE LaMont, the truth is that the world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old. You suffer with the... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Nel tennis il vero avversario, la frontiera che include, è il giocatore stesso. C'è sempre e solo ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE This wise old whiskery fish swims up to three young fish and goes, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?'... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE You want to know the story? I'd be happy to tell you. I think I have just enough caloric energy stor... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Huh. Well you and I just disagree. Maybe the world just feels differently to us. This is all going b... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Trying to be anti-cool is just one exponent off trying to be cool -- it's the same beast. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Then he looked up, despite all best prior intentions. In four minutes, it would be another hour; a h... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ...you are excused from doing the work of constructing the fantasy. The ads do it for you. The ads, ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picay... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Advertising that makes fun of itself is so powerful because it implicitly congratulates both it... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE This appetite to choose death by pleasure if it is available to choose - this appetite of your peopl... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Lenore, it's simply that I love you. You know that. Every fiber of your being is loved by every fibe... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Supongo que ser tímido significa básicamente estar absorbido por uno mismo hasta el punto de que s... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE If you can think of times in your life that you've treated people with extraordinary decency and lov... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Eyes the broad-shouldered faceless character that symbolizes Men’s Room, does Sternberg, and strug... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE When something large and oncoming passed, the windshield's big rectangle was for a moment incandesce... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I am fortunately an entirely handsome devil and appear even younger than twenty-nine. I look like a ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE But and so things are slow, and like you they have this irritating suspicion that any real satisfact... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Sometimes, when I don't think about it, I think I have just totally escaped the Bad Thing, and that ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE If I’m hanging out with you, I can’t even tell whether I like you or not because I’m too worri... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose the Audience are vu... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE JAY: No really. Be secure. Pretend I'm a sperm cell. Here. I take the string out of the... hood of m... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The reasons that center on others are easy to manipulate. All hollow things are light. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms nearly always shoo... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Te occidere possunt sed te edere possunt nefas est. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Il suicidio è così contrario a tanti nostri istinti e impulsi programmati che nessuno sano di ment... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Blue Springs Memorial Hospital Palliative Care Unit, Independence, Mo. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The truth is you've already heard this. That this is what it's like. That it's what makes room for t... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It is a fact of life that certain people are corrosive to others’ self esteem simply as a function... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE She smelled of talcum powder and Big Red. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It's not that words or human language stop having any meaning or relevance after you die, by the way... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ...this was depressing, much the way discovering that somebody is easy to manipulate is always a lit... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The fraud part of me was always there, just as a puzzle piece, objectively speaking, is a true piece... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I don't think he was used to patients who were already aware of what their real problem was. He was ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The almost-35-year-old Terry Schmidt had very nearly nothing left anymore of the delusion that he di... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE -when he thinks of the starry-eyed puerility and narcissism of these fantasies now, a rough decade l... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE *One clue that there’s something not quite real about sequential time the way you experience it i... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Atwater knew — as did everyone at Style, though by some strange unspoken consensus it was never sa... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The reality is that dying isn’t bad, but it takes forever. And that forever is no time at all. I k... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE (..)-Dr. G. would later say that the whole "my whole life flashed before me" phenomenon at the end i... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Even as I wrote my note to Fern, for instance, expressing sentiments and regrets that were real, a p... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE If I understand you right,' he says, 'you're saying that you're basically a calculating manipulative... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It is a fact of life that certain people are corrosive to others' self esteem simply as a function o... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of wha... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The truth is you already know what it's like. You already know the difference between the size and s... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Hell hath no fury like a coolly received postmodernist. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of cours... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE When he smoked marijuana he tended to masterbate a great deal. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I like the fans’ sound at night. Do you? It’s like somebody big far away goes like: it’sOKit�... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Here is how to turn down an extramural date so you won't be asked again. Say something like I'm terr... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE the patriotic or religious bumper stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfi... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE This, of course, is because today’s postfeminist era is also today’s postmodern era, in which su... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness �... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE We're kind of wishing some parents would come back. And of course we're uneasy about the fac... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The other half is to dramatize the fact that we still 'are' human beings, now. Or can be. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE