A Quote by David Foster Wallace

The reason ... our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down.

David Foster Wallace

Quote Topics

Cultural Down Impossible Irony Once Our Pervasive Pin Powerful Reason

Quote Author

David Foster Wallace
American - Writer
February 21, 1962 - December 12, 2008

And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don’t really mean what I’m saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.

David Foster Wallace

The Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki once stated, 'International cultural exchange is impossible - therefore we must try.' I agree with all my heart. The impossibility of seeing beyond one's own cultural context is a political act in the world and has the potential to break down the rigid assumptions surrounding us.

Anne Bogart

Irony is the hardest addiction of all. Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, the deep-down need to mean two things at once, to be in two places at once, not to be there for the catastrophe of a fixed meaning.

Edward St Aubyn

I don't think readers of Mann have overlooked the fact that he was a great ironist, but they have tended to see the irony in particular parts of the novella, and to miss it in others.

Philip Kitcher

'The Stepford Wives' was too big, and it was unsatisfying to do. Not that it was unsatisfying to do, but it was unsatisfying as a result because, as much as I loved parts of it, and I'm really proud of so much of it, the entire movie wasn't what I wanted it to be. It's my own fault; I didn't follow my instincts.

Frank Oz

Nobody gets irony anymore, as we are now living in the post-ironic age. Once George Bush gets a library, our irony is dead.

Eric Idle

You take five fingers. Individually, I can pin any one of them, but if I pin them together (makes a fist), it's damn near impossible to turn this around.

Ray Lewis

I've met a lot of pin-up girls, but I've never been able to pin one down

Groucho Marx

The power paradox is that we gain power by advancing the welfare of other people and yet when we feel powerful, it turns us into impulsive sociopaths and we lose those very skills. If you're in the military, you gain power by forging strong ties in your comrades. And then the irony is that once we feel powerful and we are taken with our own success, we ignore the skills that got us power in the first place.

Dacher Keltner

Segregation has never been a shadowy, impossible-to-pin-down conspiracy. It's been an American way of life.

Jason Whitlock

I love the irony of movies. I really do. For whatever reason, I'm incredibly intrigued by the irony of reality in a motion picture.

Zack Snyder

I've always been very interested in ensemble work. One reason why I don't go out and do a stand-up act is that I did it once and I found it unsatisfying. I don't really like being out there by myself. I like reacting with other people.

Paul Reubens

It's hard to pin down what it means to be an evangelical today. It's been diluted quite a bit. It is a powerful voting bloc, no question, but they're liberal as well as conservative - and they're made of Latinos, blacks, whites.

Franklin Graham

'The Wall' is a reaction to 'Edge of Tomorrow,' where I was like, 'I don't need time travel and aliens to take a hero and pin them down in an impossible situation. I can do it in a much simpler way.' And that was 'The Wall.'