Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by David Foster Wallace

Quote by David Foster Wallace

Work

Conversations with David Foster Wallace

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace

American novelist known for his unique literary style and profound insights into modern life. His works include 'Infinite Jest' and 'The Broom of the System'. more

You May Also Like

“Não é significativo que, em inglês, as palavras lobster (lagosta), fish (peixe) e chicken (frango) se refiram tanto ao animal quanto à carne, enquanto a maior parte dos mamíferos exige eufemismos como beef (carne de boi) e pork (carne de porco) para nos ajudar a separar a carne que comemos da criatura viva a quem um dia ela pertenceu? Seria isso uma prova de que existe um desconforto profundo a respeito de comer animais superiores, endêmico o bastante para vir à tona no idioma, mas que diminui à medida que nos afastamos da ordem dos mamíferos? (E seria lamb/lamb (cordeiro/cordeiro) o contraexemplo que empana toda essa teoria, ou existiriam motivos especiais, bíblico-históricos, para tal equivalência?)”

LobsterDfw
Book:A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
Create image

“I bought a house, it's small and brick and next to a horse pasture. It has what seems like a 6-acre lawn, and I bought the house in the winter and it didn't occur to me that the grass in this lawn grows and will have somehow to be dealt with. I haven't mowed a lawn since I folded my childhood lawn-mowing business at 13, and I see all my neighbors mowing their own 6-acre lawns like every fourth day, and Weed-Whacking, and dispersing seed and nitrates through devices that look like enormous flour-sifters on wheels, and I am not keen on becoming a lawn-obsessed homeowner. But it's nice to own a house and not pay off a landlord's mortgage.”

Dfw
Book:Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace
Create image

“That's what we've been taught, this is the underpinning of all European culture-this firm belief that there are no secrets that won't sooner or later come to light. Who was it that said it? Jesus? No, Pascal, I think it was… so naïve. But this faith has been nurtured for centuries; it has sprouted its own mythology: the cranes of Ibycus, manuscripts don't burn. An ontological faith in the fundamental knowability of every human deed. The certainty that, as they now teach journalism majors, you can find everything on the Internet. As if the Library of Alexandria never existed. Or the Pogruzhalsky arson, when the whole historical section of the Academy of Sciences' Public Library, more than six-hundred thousand volumes, including the Central Council archives from 1918, went up in flames. That was in the summer of 1964; Mom was pregnant with me already, and almost for an entire month afterward, as she made her way to work at the Lavra, she would get off the trolleybus when it got close to the university and take the subway the rest of the way: above ground, the stench from the site of the fire made her nauseous. Artem said there were early printed volumes and even chronicles in that section-our entire Middle Ages went up in smoke, almost all of the pre-Muscovite era. The arsonist was convicted after a widely publicized trial, and then was sent to work in Moldova's State Archives: the war went on. And we comforted ourselves with "manuscripts don't burn." Oh, but they do burn. And cannot be restored.”

MemoryBurning BooksBulgakov
Book:The Museum of Abandoned Secrets
Create image

“You get to a place eventually. The advanced reading section in the library of living. A place where they no longer stock the story that you’re looking for in paperback. Only leather bound first editions... with no fancy art on the cover. This is where they keep the books that look like they’re about to fall apart first day off the press. This is where they keep the books that don’t mind waiting in the darkness for someone to understand them. This is where they keep the books your parents tell you not to read. I’ll say it again. This shit isn’t offered in paperback. You’re gonna need a hard cover to write the hard truths. If it doesn’t have a spine, it’s not gonna stand up for itself. You’ll know you’re getting close when the library goes from quiet to silent. You’ll know you’re getting close when every trace of humanity disappears. You’ll know you’re getting close with the titles all sound like the last chapter at the end of the book. They call this section: “These Books Are Ready To Burn.”

PoetryLibraryBanned BooksBurning Books
Author:Kalen Dion
Create image

“I will gather up a lifetime of things unsaid, write them down, and then offer them all to be lit up for security and burned. All at once. And then I can watch the whole thing turn to ash. The whole damn thing. Light the match, and watch it burn. What a loaded bonfire that would be though, if this gets burned when I finish filling up the whole book. What a cleansing experience that will be! If flames could speak, what a story they would tell. They say that the original bonfires were the burning up of bones. Bad bones. Bad people. Enemies. Turning bones to ash. And it was the burning up of curses and all things bad as well. God knows we have had and still have enemies, and even curses. Real ones.”

EnemiesCleansingConflict ResolutionBurning BooksBonfires
Book:Mallias The Greek Gangster the story of a card cheat
Create image