A Quote by David Foster Wallace

You don't have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness ... has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I'm going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me.

David Foster Wallace

Quote Topics

About Alone Angst Both Death Die Dread Go Going Hard Loneliness Me Much Our Realize Recognition Relationships Rest Think Very Without World

Quote Author

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

I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard.

David Foster Wallace

The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die — with my hand in the hand of some nice-looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch.

Tennessee Williams

I've had relationships before where you break up, and you think you're going to die, and then you realise you're definitely not going to die, and actually, you're probably better off without them.

Shura

Listen she said, everything ends, every single relationship you will ever have in your lifetime is going to end.... I'll die, you'll die, you'll get tired of each other. You don't always know how it's going to happen, but it is always going to happen. So stop trying to make everything permanent, it doesn't work. I want you to go out there and find some nice man you have no intention of spending the rest of your life with. You can be very, very happy with people you aren't going to marry.

Ann Patchett

There's that wonderful line in Measure for Measure. I forget which of the characters has committed adultery and is going to die. He looks at his hand and says, "How could this die?" That's the joke. I've always thought, and this is nothing new, that we don't really believe we die. I think you're going to die, because I know that's what happens but I can't imagine I'm going to die.

Lore Segal

I'm afraid of sudden death. I'd like to know I'm going to die. That's why death row wouldn't be so bad, although it's not pleasant. And cancer, inoperable, wouldn't be bad. That's not pleasant either. But to drop dead suddenly, it's hard on everybody else. My family, my relatives, my friends. It's just not a good way to go. I want to know I'm going to die.

Jack Kevorkian

I used to pessimistically think I was going to die alone, but now I optimistically know I'm going to die hoping to meet someone.

Dana Gould

I get panic attacks about dying, it's terrible. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and my brain goes 'you're going to die, you're going to die, you're going to die.'

Russell Howard

I thought I was going to die a few times. On the Freedom Ride in the year 1961, when I was beaten at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, I thought I was going to die. On March 7th, 1965, when I was hit in the head with a night stick by a State Trooper at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death, but nothing can make me question the philosophy of nonviolence.

John Lewis

He knew one thing only, and it was beyond fear or reason: He was not going to die crouching here like a child playing hide-and-seek; he was not going to die kneeling at Voldemort’s feet . . . he was going to die upright like his father, and he was going to die trying to defend himself, even if no defense was possible. . . .

J. K. Rowling

It's been rumored for almost a year that Tormund was going out and stuff like that. But that's 'Game of Thrones.' The people you think are going to die don't die. Then people will die in a moment when you did not expect them to die.

Kristofer Hivju

Self-knowledge, I guess, is hard. But I think pain is harder, personally. I think to be hopeless is very hard. I think to die without hope or to live without hope is very hard.

Frederick Lenz

I don't know what is the meaning of death, but I am not afraid to die - and I go on, non-stop, going forward with life. Even though I, Bruce Lee, may die some day without fulfilling all of my ambitions, I will have no regrets. I did what I wanted to do and what I've done, I've done with sincerity and to the best of my ability. You can't expect much more from life.

Bruce Lee

There's a thing I think children realise at a certain age, which is that if their parents say, 'Don't do it', and they go ahead and do it, they're still not going to die. And I think that's what it is: that no matter what you do, you're not going to die.

Rupert Graves

I decided to go to the night, myself, and started to go out to the fields, where I would encounter things that I cannot see very well, that I cannot detect very well, and to put myself in a position where I'm going to be suspected as a being entering a territory of other beings, and I'm also going to suspect them. I have to be very alert, and they are going to be very alert - this kind of position I felt was very much what is going on in the world for me.