I never, even for a moment, doubted what theyโd told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubtโs complete absence. They have forgotten.
David Foster WallaceI had four hundred thousand pages of continental philosophy and lit theory in my head. And by God, I was going to use it to prove to him that I was smarter than he was.
David Foster WallaceThe assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism.
David Foster WallaceMany people in America throw the term "fascism" around, particularly for Middle-Eastern terrorists, but in fact what fascism really is is a close alliance between a unitary executive and a state and large corporations and a state.
David Foster WallaceWe're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life "outside" the story changes the story.
David Foster WallaceJohn McEnroe...was arguably the best serve-and-volley man of all time, but then McEnroe was an exception to pretty much every predictive norm there was. At his peak (say 1980 to 1984), he was the greatest tennis player who ever lived-the most talented, the most beautiful, the most tormented: a genius. For me, watching McEnroe don a blue polyester blazer and do stiff lame truistic color commentary for TV is like watching Faulkner do a Gap ad.
David Foster Wallace