'You know what your problem is, Hallie?' 'I have just one problem?' - David Foster Wallace

Engraved portrait of David Foster Wallace, facing right

'You know what your problem is, Hallie?' 'I have just one problem?'

English
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About David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace (21 February 1962 – 12 September 2008) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His works include The Broom of the System (novel), Infinite Jest (novel), The Girl With Curious Hair (short story collection), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (short story collection), A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (essay collection), and the posthumously-published The Pale King (novel) and Both Flesh and Not (essay collection).

Biography information from Wikiquote · Portrait adapted from Wikimedia Commons, Steve Rhodes (CC BY)

Also Known As

Alternative Names: David Wallace

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Additional quotes by David Foster Wallace

To experience commitment as the loss of options, a type of death, the death of childhood's limitless possibility, of the flattery of choice without duress-this will happen, mark me. Childhood's end.

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The trick to this solution is that you’d have to be 100% honest. Meaning not just sincere but almost naked. Worse than naked - more like unarmed. Defenseless. ‘This thing I feel, I can’t name it straight out but it seems important, do you feel it too?’ - this sort of direct question is not for the squeamish. For one thing, it’s perilously close to “Do you like me? Please like me,” which you know quite well that 99% of all interhuman manipulation and bullshit gamesmanship that goes on goes on precisely because the idea of saying this sort of thing straight out is regarded as somehow obsene. In fact one of the very last few interperonal taboos we have is kind of obscenely naked direct interrogation of somebody else. It looks pathetic and desperate. That’s how it’ll look to the reader. And it will have to. There’s no way around it.

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