A Quote by David Foster Wallace

My own terror of appearing sentimental is so strong that I’ve decided to fight against it, some; but the terror is still there. . . . Do you identify with a distaste/fear about sentimentality? Do you agree that, past a certain line, such distaste can turn everything arch and sneering and too ironic? Or do you have your own set of abstract questions to drive yourself nuts with?

David Foster Wallace

Quote Topics

About Abstract Against Agree Appearing Arch Certain Decided Distaste Drive Everything Fear Fight Identify Ironic Line My Own Nuts Own Past Questions Sentimental Sentimentality Set Some Still Strong Terror Too Turn Your Yourself

Quote Author

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

What is freedom? It consists in two things: to know each his own limitations and accept them - that is the same thing as to know oneself, and accept oneself as one is, without fear, or envy, or distaste; and to recognise and accept the conditions under which one lives, also without fear or envy, or distaste. When you do this, you shall be free.

Ann Bridge

I think you have to have your own expectations of yourself and your own sense of purpose and your own intrinsic pleasure in the task. If you don't, you will drive yourself off a cliff because your fortunes will rise and fall, and if you identify too closely with that, you really will go insane.

Sarah Ruhl

The thing about terror and why it's so interesting is that terror is there to keep us safe. But then the issue comes in: Well, how do you ever grow if you can't get past this fear? That's called suppression.

Jonathan Majors

It's very hard to win without any problems. To win, you have to fight. And many times, this fight means to indispose in certain ways with some people, to prevail your beliefs. Your point of view, your ideas and your personality above everything. If you don`t fight hard, you lose your own way. And if you lose your own way, you`re nobody. So, to achieve this line of conduct, you have to fight very hard. And in many times, you really have to fight.

Ayrton Senna

Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believed in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait.

Tim O'Brien

How can Blair fight a war on terror? Terror is not an ideology or an army; terror is a technique.

David Hockney

Terror. When you come home and notice everything you own has been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you-you hear it-you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around there’s nothing there.

Stephen King

Terror must be attacked from where it originates. Otherwise, you will only be defending yourself against terror.

Arun Jaitley

There's also something sexual about watching the nubile girl in terror. But you do take on her fear as your own.

Christopher Bollen

To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror, to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.

Frank Herbert

The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can survive on your own. You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.

Frederick Buechner

Why should not a writer be permitted to make use of the levers of fear, terror and horror because some feeble soul here and there finds it more than it can bear? Shall there be no strong meat at table because there happen to be some guests there whose stomachs are weak, or who have spoiled their own digestions?

E. T. A. Hoffmann

We stand for organized terror - this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet Government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence. When confronted with evidence criminals in almost every case confess; and what argument can have greater weight than a criminal's own confession.

Felix Dzerzhinsky

I’m also fascinated by the difference between terror and fear. Fear says, “Do not actually put your hand in the alligator,” while terror says, “Avoid Florida entirely because alligators exist.

Mira Grant

There is no good terror and bad terror. Terror is terror. There's not terror that you can accept and terror that you cannot accept. Terror is terror. Murder is murder.