There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"..... It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: "This is water." "This is water.

A filmed adaptation of Brief Interviews directed by John Krasinski was released in 2009 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. When he experienced severe side effects from the medication Wallace attempted to wean himself from his primary antidepressant phenelzine. Wallace's mother Sally Foster Wallace attended graduate school in English Composition at the University of Illinois and became a professor of English at Parkland College—a community college in Champaign—where David Foster Wallace won a national Professor of the Year award in 1996.

With his suicide he left behind an unfiniDavid Foster Wallaced novel The Pale King which was subsequently publiDavid Foster Wallaced in 2011 and in 2012 was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Max Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story was publiDavid Foster Wallaced in September 2012. David Foster Wallace (February 21 1962 – September 12 2008) was an award-winning American novelist short story writer essayist and professor at Pomona College in Claremont California.