"What if there was something essentially wrong with Claude Sylvanshine that wasn't wrong with other people? What if he was simple ill-suited, the way some people are born without limbs or certain organs? The neurology of failure. What if he was simply born and destined to live in the shadow of Total Fear and Despair, and all his so-called activities were pathetic attempts to distract him from the inevitable?"

Existence, Fear, Despair, Identity, Failure

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"What if there was something essentially wrong with Claude Sylvanshine that wasn't wrong with other people? What if he was simple ill-suited, the way some people are born without limbs or certain organs? The neurology of failure. What if he was simply born and destined to live in the shadow of Total Fear and Despair, and all his so-called activities were pathetic attempts to distract him from the inevitable?"

Exlpore more Existence quotes

"We are born more dead than when we die after we have searched death through the storm of the instants of our entire life."

Sorin Cerin, Romanian Philosopher

Existence, Life, Death, Experience

"The human emotions are worthy of nothing when our existence has no realistic value."

M.F. Moonzajer, Afghan Author

Existence, Emotion, Worth, Values

"And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud."

Kurt Vonnegut, American Author

Existence, Luck, Life, Humor, Truth

"That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?''Yes' Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.'Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

Kurt Vonnegut, American Author

Existence, Time, Now, Moment

"I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating."

Jean-Paul Sartre, French Philosopher

Existence, Being, Philosophy, Life

"Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece."

Vladimir Nabokov, American Novelist

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"Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence."

Friedrich Engels, German Philosopher

Existence, Judgment, Reason

"Ain't you thinkin' what's it gonna be like when we get there? Ain't you scared it won't be nice like we thought?No, she said quickly. No, I ain't. You can't do that. I can't do that. It's too much - livin' too many lives. Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes, it'll on'y be one."

John Steinbeck, American Author

Existence, Life, Fear, Hope, Future

"Do something from nothing for nothing is nothing unless it is made something. There is always something common with something and nothing and that is the 'thing."

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, Ghanaian Author

Existence, Nothing, Creation, Meaning

"The sacredness of existence is spiritual."

Lailah Gifty Akita, Ghanaian Author

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Explore more quotes by David Foster Wallace

"You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in...it's actually kind of tragic because you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is. And there were a couple of years where I really struggled with that."

Psychology, Perfectionism, Fidelity, Tragedy, Reality

"I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader."

Desire, Writers

"Why do prostitutes when they get straight always try and get so prim? It's like long-repressed librarian-ambitions come flooding out."

Society, Gender, Social norms, Sexuality, Humor

"One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism."

Philosophy, Artist

"The worst thing about irony for me is that it attenuates emotion."

Irony, Emotion, Distance, Feeling

"The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness."

Society, Loneliness

"The patriotic or religious bumper stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers, who are usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just twenty stupid feet ahead in the traffic jam..."

Society, Critique, Hypocrisy, Behavior

"Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes."

Consequence, Consequences, Weapons

"I think I was very often bored as a child, but boredom is not what I knew it as-what I knew was that I worried a lot."

Childhood, Boredom, Worry, Emotion

"No one can call themselves a writer until he or she has written at least fifty stories."

Writing, Story, Work, Identity