David Foster Wallace

Your personal will is the web your disease sits and spins in. The will you call your own ceased to be yours as of who knows how many Substance-drenched years ago.

A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane.

[I]f the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is.

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.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

She was terrified of everything, and terrified to show it.

What I know about auto racing could be inscribed with a dry Magic Marker on the lip of a Coke bottle.

[T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.

Be on guard. The road widens, and many of the detours are seductive.

It's weird to feel like you miss someone you're not even sure you know.

Worship your body, beauty, and sexual allure and you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.