John Foster Wallace Quotes & Sayings

When I was drunk I wanted to get sober and when I was sober I wanted to get drunk,' John L. says; 'I lived that way for years, and I submit to you that's not livin that's a fuckin death-in-life. — David Foster Wallace

John 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

John Ziegler is not a journalist-he is an entertainer. Or maybe it's better to say that he is part of a peculiar, modern, and very popular type of news industry, one that manages to enjoy authority and influence of journalism without the stodgy constraints of fairness, objectivity, and responsibility that make trying to tell the truth such a drag for everyone involved. It is a frightening industry, though not for any of the simple reasons most critics give. — David Foster Wallace

When a solipsist dies ... everything goes with him. — David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace, in my opinion, is one of the greatest writers we've ever had, certainly in the last twenty years. His obvious dominance of the English language is partnered with honest moments and the most beautifully dark sensibility. — John Krasinski

But the young educated adults of the 90s
who were, of course, the children of the same impassioned infidelities and divorces Mr. Updike wrote about so
beautifully
got to watch all this brave new individualism and self-expression and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation. Today's sub-40s have different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without once having loved something more than yourself. — David Foster Wallace

Ast year's Best-Sex-Scene-in-a-film winner Vince Voyeur's real name turns out to be John LaForme. Rhetorical Q.: How, if one's real name was John LaForme, could that person possibly feel the need for a nom de guerre? — David Foster Wallace

Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn't enough to make him great. If it were, Judith Krantz and John Grisham would be great fiction writers, and by any but the most commercial standards they're not even very good. — David Foster Wallace