David Foster Wallace Quotes

I think half or almost all of the pain in the world … is people not feeling seen. It’s like Mr. Rogers, my hero, says: “Love is the root of everything … love or the lack of it.”

I'm always interested in getting to know people, and that means vilified people as much as those celebrated. You find out that heroes aren't always so heroic, and villains have some bit of humanity in them.

Eleanor Oliphant isn't me or anyone I know. Of course I've felt loneliness - everybody does - but Eleanor and her experiences are fictional.

If there is one person on the planet who still is suffering from loneliness and from pain or despair, and we don't know about it, or we don't want to know about it, then something is wrong with the world.

Novels are political not because writers carry party cards -- some do, I do not -- but because good fiction is about identifying with and understanding people who are not necessarily like us. By nature all good novels are political because identifying with the other is political. At the heart of the 'art of the novel' lies the human capacity to see the world through others' eyes. Compassion is the greatest strength of the novelist.

Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little?

I am but a stranger ... as we all are. Lonely inside our separate skins, we cannot know each others pain and must bear our own in solitude. For my part, I have found that walking soothes it; and that, given luck, sometimes we find one to walk besides us ... at least for a little way.

Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it's accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another's eyes or heart.

She's lonely and wounded and very vulnerable and it really is a story about people at the heart of it all.

There have been a few friends who have taught me some great lessons in life. I wouldn't like to name them. They did things that I never expected out of them that left me heart-broken. It was during these rough patches in life that they left me alone. I know now that it was only my position that they were interested in.

At least I had that, one guy understood me.

I'm drawn to people who find themselves on the outside of things. I'm moved by that in real life.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.

A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain.

Novels attempt to render human experience; that's really all they are. They are meant to convey empathy for the character.

All I want is for people, when they read my books, to feel companioned, to feel they're not alone in the world.

Sometimes it's more important to be human, than to have good taste.

We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.

Why don't people take the trouble to let you know that they are alive? It is so much more important. The whole system is wrong. No sooner do I die, than all the flowers I have ever longed for in life pour in.

Only when the sense of the pain of others begins does man begin.

I chose to present myself as one who comes from among the people, and I can be touched by their pain because I have my own.

If you're living completely on your own, break out of solitary confinement. Seek to understand others, and help them understand you.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

Some of my best friends here in New York have pasts I have a hard time reconciling with the people I'm close to now. But I wouldn't change them - or their pasts - for anything in the world. Their experiences are what made them the people they are today.