David Foster Wallace Quotes

A 'nidiot' is something different from an idiot. An idiot is someone whose problems are caused by not concentrating enough. A 'nidiot' is someone who makes his life more complicated by thinking too much rather than not enough. I'm not an idiot, but I'm definitely a 'nidiot'!

I think generally I'm kind of interested in subjective experience, what goes on inside someone's head, that being all they really know of the world.

The thought is not something that observes an inner event, but, rather it is this inner event itself. We do not reflect on something, but, rather, something thinks itself in us.

Consciousness is the perception of what passes in man's own mind.

Preston, I don't think this creature could ever find its way into your head. Quite apart from anything else, it seems pretty crowded and complicated to me.

What are you thinking? Nothing. I mean...a lot of things. Kind of all at once.

What happens behind your eyes is more important than what happens in front of them. This is a reversal from the way that we have been taught and the way that we had experienced the world as five sensory humans.

Most words evolved as a description of the outside world, hence their inadequacy to describe what is going on inside me.

There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.

it is in our minds that we live much of our life.

None of us exist in a world that is the same world that any of the rest of us live in. The world that's important is the world behind each of our eyes, which is something that none of the rest of us can access.

Uncertainty is a personal matter; it is not the uncertainty but your uncertainty.

The body is the outermost layer of the mind.

Reality! But what does this word mean? Each has his own reality. I draw upon my personal reality upon the dark side of myself, my unconscious.

I don't think I'm a weirdo in a bad way. There's just a lot going on in my head.

The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by an invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing.

Thinking of nothing. Trying to think of nothing. Thinking of everything.

A thought will color a world for us.

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

I am unable, when I turn to myself, to recognize any of my faculties or my capacities. The inner sensation which I have of myself informs me that I am, that I think, that I will, that I have sensory awareness, that I suffer, and so on; but it provides me with no knowledge whatever of what I am - of the nature of my thought, my sensations, my passions, or my pain - or the mutual relations that obtain between all these things ... I have no idea whatever of my soul.

Inner experience ... is not easily accessible and, viewed from the outside by intelligence, it would even be necessary to see in it a sum of distinct operations, some intellectual, others aesthetic, yet others moral. ... It is only from within, lived to the point of terror, that it appears to unify that which discursive thought must separate.

The big show is inside my head.

This is one of those times when explaining a feeling cannot measure up to actually having the feeling

Vulgar souls look hastily and superficially at the sea and accuse it of monotony; other more privileged beings could spend a lifetime admiring it and discovering new and changing phenomena that delight them. So it is with love.

I like neurotic people. I like troubled people. Not that I don't like squared-away people, but I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.