David Foster Wallace - Hard Quotes

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This is not a matter of virtue-it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.

David Foster Wallace
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.... How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away.

David Foster Wallace
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.

David Foster Wallace
The first time I lay actual eyes on the real David Lynch on the set of his movie, he's peeing on a tree...Mr. David Lynch, a prodigious coffee drinker, apparently pees hard and often.

David Foster Wallace
In fact, the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians makes us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard even to name, much less talk about.

David Foster Wallace
When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces. The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.

David Foster Wallace
It's probably hard to feel any sort of Romantic spiritual connection to nature when you have to make your living from it.

David Foster Wallace
That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack. That concentrating on anything is very hard work.

David Foster Wallace