If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA's state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts [...] That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. Then that most nonaddicted adult civilians have already absorbed and accepted this fact, often rather early on [...] That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused [...] That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That gambling can be an abusable escape, too, and work, shopping, and shoplifting, and sex, and abstention, and masturbation, and food, and exercise, and meditation/prayer [...] That loneliness is not a function of solitude [...] That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt [...] That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness [...] That the effects of too many cups of coffee are in no way pleasant or intoxicating [...] That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it's almost its own form of intoxicating buzz. That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused [...] That it is permissible to want [...] That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.
David Foster Wallace
Related I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix. DEYTH BANGER The two men had a conversation. Brief, cryptic, to the point. As though they had exchanged numbers a... ARUNDHATI ROY I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y... THEHEALTHFOODGURU That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I realized that day that blessings come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes. CRAIG GROESCHEL Let your little inspire someone greatly and greatly be the reasons for the smiles of someone in litt... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Let your little inspires someone greatly and greatly be the reasons for the smiles of someone in lit... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Sharing a room with the person you want most is like sharing a room with an open fire. He... RAINBOW ROWELL We have the capacity to become a unique and special person unlike any other. Draw on your inner reso... ANGIE KARAN 6 Ways To Give Your Mind A Break: 1. Stop stressing 2. Stop worrying 3. Give re... GERMANY KENT What is it that makes you so angry, bothers you so deeply, that you're compelled to act? CRAIG GROESCHEL You are always afraid that somebody may think you a fool. You are afraid that if others think you to... OSHO Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not. SONYA.E.WILLIAMS Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th... DEYTH BANGER The Imperial Senate, ever conscious of the weight of public opinion resting on the tip of the pencil... CHRISTINA ENGELA Stairs to climb are difficult it takes time and effort and going down is easies job... what do I mea... DEYTH BANGER The universe is so vast, so immense, we can never expect to explore it all. It is in effect, not so ... CHRISTINA ENGELA Who are we to say getting incested or abused or violated or any of those things can’t have their p... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE There is really no natural limit to the practice of loving kindness in meditation or in one’s life... JON KABAT-ZINN You can't just decide to be happy." "No, you can't. But you can sure as hell decide to be... LEV GROSSMAN If therefore you shall be remembered for what you did with what you had more than what you had, use ... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH I think that pretty much every form of fiction (I’d include fantasy, obviously) can actually be a ... NEIL GAIMAN SOLIDAO, LONELINESS. What is it that we call loneliness. It can't simply be the absence of othe... PASCAL MERCIER Love is like energy. It can never be created nor destroyed...it is just always there. You just have ... IAN PHILPOT Do you even know,” she said, and I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was about to cr... ANN LECKIE You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspape... JOSEPH CAMPBELL Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make -- bombs, for instan... LEMONY SNICKET So what I want to know is why it is that I can no longer find you, in my mind. You are still there, ... NEIL GAIMAN When someone cries so hard that it hurts their throat, it is out of frustration or knowing that no m... CHASE BROOKS You have what others don't have. This is good news which means you can do what others can't do! You ... ISRAELMORE AYIVOR There will come a time,” I said, “when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a tim... JOHN GREEN For starters, that’s a rather simple principle of Time Travel right there – and according to the... CHRISTINA ENGELA 28. Feelings are neither right nor wrong. It's what you do with them that causes the problems. JAMES C. DOBSON Thus Epicurus also, when he designs to destroy the natural fellowship of mankind, at the same time m... EPICTETUS Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls i... JOSEPH CONRAD You can be all that you want to be. Keep dreaming and reach out to your dreams. LAILAH GIFTY AKITA The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the... MICHAEL HARRIS Harry’s letter to his daughter: If I could give you just one thing, I’d want it to be... HARRY BROWNE Now is the time when you see people which you know... but they start ignoring you... and how do you ... DEYTH BANGER I think the plasticity of the novel is its greatest challenge. There are no rules; there is no neces... SUE MILLER I try to explain to people that the only way to be cool is to be who you truly are, and the only way... TUCKER MAX But that can never be," said Milo, jumping to his feet. "Don't be too sure," said the child pat... NORTON JUSTER The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here... ITALO CALVINO It's sweet and everything, but it's like you're not even there sometimes. It's great that you can li... STEPHEN CHBOSKY She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing some... TONI MORRISON A big sacrifice is coming, and you won't have the courage to make it. That will cost you dearly. It ... RICK RIORDAN Here's my question: What age are you when you're in Heaven? I mean, if it's Heaven, you should be at... JODI PICOULT If you're a follower of Jesus, He has given you abundance so that you can care for others, not so yo... CRAIG GROESCHEL Life is also about balance, just the way recipes are about balance. When your recipe isn't balanced,... STACEY BALLIS Know the word of God not in order that by doing so you might be saved; know it rather so that unlike... CRISS JAMI THE INVITATION by Oriah Mountain Dreamer It doesn't interest me what you do for a li... ORIAH MOUNTAIN DREAMER That is something that every Pac-10 team should start with, whether you are the last-place team or t... TYRONE WILLINGHAM That is something that every Pac-10 team should start with, whether you are the last-place team or t... TYRONE WILLINGHAM All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom w... JOAN DIDION We can never make proper goodbyes. It was your last ride in a Checker cab and you had no warning. It... COLSON WHITEHEAD I appreciate the fact that you have one redeeming quality, Jack, but that is all it is. Just a hint ... K.A. LINDE I do not know you, my friends, not individually, most of you, but this is the wonderful thing about ... D. MARTYN LLOYD-JONES We all know that there are language forms that are considered impolite and out of order, no matter w... JUNOT DíAZ This is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can w... ANON. The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surpr... C.S. LEWIS if someone got to see the Beautiful itself, absolute, pure, unmixed, not polluted by human flesh or ... PLATO Herein lies the paradox: If you want more of whatever it is you desire, you have to first prove to t... DENNIS MERRITT JONES Reach out and help others. If you have the power to make someone happy, do it. Be a vessel, be the c... GERMANY KENT No matter what I put out, somebody will be offended. I made a video on 10 reasons to smile, and it h... LILLY SINGH You are not a bad person because you are gay. You are you because you are you and you were meant to ... TEGAN QUIN And he got going from there to America. Worked his passage, I s'pose, like a lot more. And I heard h... EDDIE LENIHAN There is a club in this world that you do not join knowingly. One day you are just a memb... JOHNA PASSARO It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare t... ORIAH MOUNTAIN DREAMER Everything we say and do affects people. It can be either physically or mentally. Words ca... HINA YU I'm asking God to bless you with something that unsettles you, disturbs you, and upsets you. CRAIG GROESCHEL Closing The Cycle One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on st... PAULO COELHO Responsibility begins with the willingness to be cause in the matter of one's life. Ultimately, it i... WERNER ERHARD It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you ... MARGARET ATWOOD Spilling a Secret What its size, will have varying consequences. It’s not ... ELLEN HOPKINS Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do t... RICHARD FEYNMAN Do not say, 'But it is hypocritical to thank God with my tongue when I don't feel thankful in my hea... JOHN PIPER Be yourself, be who you can be. LAILAH GIFTY AKITA Many are of the mindset that a door will open for them one day. That is great, but what if no door o... OSCAR BIMPONG Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, ... ARTHUR PINE Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, ... PAULINE KAEL A birthday is a very big thing. It should be big from the minute you wake up. It should be such a bi... CATHERINE RYAN HYDE Electrons, when they were first discovered, behaved exactly like particles or bullets, very simply. ... RICHARD FEYNMAN The way to be a man of prayer, and be governed by its spirit, is not to get a book full of prayers; ... WILLIAM LAW Haven't you noticed, too, on the part of nearly everyone you know, a growing rebellion against the p... JACK FINNEY If you are not there for other people, do not expect them to be there for you. In many a case one mi... CRISS JAMI Being with a friend in great pain is not easy. It makes us uncomfortable. We do not know what to do ... HENRI J.M. NOUWEN ... for one of the nicest things about mathematics, or anything else you might care to learn, is tha... NORTON JUSTER It learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be. Say you promise to be at your ... MARY OLIVER Be all that you can be. You can be great. LAILAH GIFTY AKITA Millions of people acknowledge today that they do not know the meaning of life. JAMES C. DOBSON Every time you post something online, you have a choice. You can either make it something that ... ZOE SUGG What is it that makes you cry? It is only your attachments. What is it that you miss when it is lost... OSHO Sometimes we humans do not want to accept love for what it is. Love demands, transforms, and most of... JERLINE For those who are not frightened by the solitude, everything will have a different taste. PAULO COELHO Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've vis... NEIL GAIMAN Whether a person feels positive or not is kind of a comment on their personality and of no great int... AVRAM NOAM CHOMSKY Dont act like you are walking around with a Tshirt that says "I give Up!" on the front and on the ba... TIMOTHY PADAYACHEE Attitude Is Everything We live in a culture that is blind to betrayal and intolerant of e... SANDRA LEE DENNIS The motion picture is like a picture of a lady in a half-piece bathing suit. If she wore a few more ... RAYMOND CHANDLER
More David Foster Wallace
Nothing brings you together like a common enemy. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It looks like you can write a minimalist piece without much bleeding. And you can. But not a good on... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer c... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?" DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The great myth is that the bad ones don't last long. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a p... 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DAVID FOSTER WALLACE What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barel... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ...when he kneels at other times and prays or meditates or tries to achieve a Big-Picture spiritual ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I claim that the fact that we are strongly encouraged to identify with characters for whom death is ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The 46-year-old recipient of the Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart was actively window shopping in... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE At least part of the reason I am a SNOOT is that for years my mom brainwashed us in all sort of subt... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I balked at trying antidepressants, I just couldn't see myself taking pills to try to be less of a f... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I think serious art is supposed to make us confront things that are difficult in ourselves and in th... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establis... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE That as people age, accumulate more and more private experiences, their sense of history tightens, n... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Maybe it's the fact the most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older pe... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I'm not one of the self-hating ones. The... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I am not what you see and hear. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain w... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE What I know about auto racing could be inscribed with a dry Magic Marker on the lip of a Coke bottle... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Statisticians report that television is watched over six hours a day in the average American househo... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I think the world divides neatly into those who are excited by the managed induction of terror and t... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Organized shuffleboard has always filled me with dread. Everything about it suggests infirm senescen... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Part of the reason I actually preferred Twin Peaks's second season to its first was the fascinating ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE There is something about a mass-market Luxury Cruise that's unbearably sad. Like most unbearably sad... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Because of the way human beings relate to narrative, we tend to identify with those characters we fi... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE shall I spend much of your time pointing out the degree to which televisual values influence the con... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE One of the few things I still miss from my Midwest childhood was this weird, deluded but unshakable ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch's Laura's muddy bothness is that it r... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ....basically the sort of guy who looks entirely at home in sockless white loafers and a mint-green ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE AN ACADEMIC DEFINITION of Lynchian might be that the term "refers to a particular kind of irony wher... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I have pointed rhythmically at the ceiling to the two-four beat of the same disco music I hated poin... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE From the line, watching, three things are striking: (a) what on TV is a brisk crack is here a whoomi... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE In school I ended up writing three different papers on "The Castaway" section of Moby-Dick, the chap... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Can you "choose " something when you are forcefully and enthusiastically immersed in it at an ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Footnote: 79) The anchor is gigantic and must weigh a hundred tons, and -- delightfully -- it really... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp an... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I have felt as bleak as I've felt since puberty, and have filled almost three Mead notebooks trying ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I think the world divides neatly into those who are excited by the managed induction of terror and t... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I have now seen sucrose beaches and water a very bright blue. I have seen an all-red leisure suit wi... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE How can even the idea of rebellion against corporate culture stay meaningful when Chrysler Inc. adve... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off; David Lynch is intereste... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I have filled 3 Mead notebooks trying to figure out whether it was Them or Just Me. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please cou... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the diale... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ...we live in an era of terrible preoccupation with presentation and interpretation, one in which re... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Psychotics, say what you want about them, tend to make the first move. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE What if, when Tracy Austin writes that after her 1989 car crash, 'I quickly accepted that there was ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Who are we to say getting incested or abused or violated or any of those things can’t have their p... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE If what's always distinguished bad writing--flat characters, a narrative world that's clichéd and n... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Why not? Why not? Why not not, then, if the best reasoning you can contrive is why not? DAVID FOSTER WALLACE There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These thin... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE --and then you're in serious trouble, very serious trouble, and you know it, finally, deadly serious... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millenial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal em... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Mediocrity is contextual. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Mary had a little lamb, its fleece electrostatic / And everywhere Mary went, the lights became errat... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Are we not all of us fanatics? I say only what you of the U.S.A. pretend you do not know. Attachment... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ... That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE sarcasm and jokes were often the bottle in which clinical depressives sent out their most plangent s... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. T... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The thing about people who are truly and malignantly crazy: their real genius is for making the peop... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE [...] almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE And Lo, for the Earth was empty of Form, and void. And Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep. A... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ...logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est" ("They can kill you, but the legalities of e... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really h... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom t... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is more like confused... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I have always tried to avoid talking to pretty girls, because pretty girls have a vicious effect on ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE All I'm saying is that it's shortsighted to blame TV. It's simply another symptom. TV didn't invent ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE it turned out that there was something terribly stressful about visual telephone interfaces that had... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It is named the "Web" for good reason. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE You see parents as kind or unkind or happy or miserable or drunk or sober or great or near-great or ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE When a solipsist dies ... everything goes with him. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE But the young educated adults of the 90s -- who were, of course, the children of the same impassione... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal e... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ...most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I had kind of a midlife crisis at twenty which probably doesn’t augur well for my longevity DAVID FOSTER WALLACE An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like somebody who smiles warmly at you only ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It now lately sometimes seemed a black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Suppose I were to give you a key ring [...] with a hundred keys, and I were to tell you that one of ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Nel momento in cui riconosceva quello che c'era su una cartuccia provava la sensazione carica d'ansi... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Someone who had authority, or should have had authority and did not exercise authority. I do not kno... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Because we’ve been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It’s ultimately just about t... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Why do prostitutes when they get straight always try and get so prim? It's like long-repressed libra... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Every love story is a ghost story. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Ortho Stice played with a kind of rigid, liquid grace, like a panther in a back-brace. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE He said he didn’t think Lenore should go to the G.O.D. "Nobody ever finds anybody in a place ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Every two or three generations the world gets vastly different, and the context in which you have to... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological eras... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Trite though it (used to) sound, real sexuality is about our struggles to connect with one another, ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE This is the kind of paradox, I think, of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now, ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I am about art here, not simple reproduction. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE TV's 'real' agenda is to be 'liked,' because if you like what you're seeing,... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE And I was -- this is just how I was afraid you'd take it. I knew it, that you'd think this means you... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few yea... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Life is like tennis. Those who serve best usually win. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The real, many-veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great player's mind as he s... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE LaMont, the truth is that the world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old. You suffer with the... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Nel tennis il vero avversario, la frontiera che include, è il giocatore stesso. C'è sempre e solo ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE This wise old whiskery fish swims up to three young fish and goes, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?'... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE You want to know the story? I'd be happy to tell you. I think I have just enough caloric energy stor... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Huh. Well you and I just disagree. Maybe the world just feels differently to us. This is all going b... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Trying to be anti-cool is just one exponent off trying to be cool -- it's the same beast. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Then he looked up, despite all best prior intentions. In four minutes, it would be another hour; a h... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ...you are excused from doing the work of constructing the fantasy. The ads do it for you. The ads, ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picay... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Advertising that makes fun of itself is so powerful because it implicitly congratulates both it... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE This appetite to choose death by pleasure if it is available to choose - this appetite of your peopl... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Lenore, it's simply that I love you. You know that. Every fiber of your being is loved by every fibe... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Supongo que ser tímido significa básicamente estar absorbido por uno mismo hasta el punto de que s... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE If you can think of times in your life that you've treated people with extraordinary decency and lov... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Eyes the broad-shouldered faceless character that symbolizes Men’s Room, does Sternberg, and strug... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE When something large and oncoming passed, the windshield's big rectangle was for a moment incandesce... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I am fortunately an entirely handsome devil and appear even younger than twenty-nine. I look like a ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE But and so things are slow, and like you they have this irritating suspicion that any real satisfact... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Sometimes, when I don't think about it, I think I have just totally escaped the Bad Thing, and that ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE If I’m hanging out with you, I can’t even tell whether I like you or not because I’m too worri... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose the Audience are vu... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE JAY: No really. Be secure. Pretend I'm a sperm cell. Here. I take the string out of the... hood of m... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The reasons that center on others are easy to manipulate. All hollow things are light. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms nearly always shoo... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Te occidere possunt sed te edere possunt nefas est. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Il suicidio è così contrario a tanti nostri istinti e impulsi programmati che nessuno sano di ment... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Blue Springs Memorial Hospital Palliative Care Unit, Independence, Mo. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The truth is you've already heard this. That this is what it's like. That it's what makes room for t... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It is a fact of life that certain people are corrosive to others’ self esteem simply as a function... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE She smelled of talcum powder and Big Red. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It's not that words or human language stop having any meaning or relevance after you die, by the way... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE ...this was depressing, much the way discovering that somebody is easy to manipulate is always a lit... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The fraud part of me was always there, just as a puzzle piece, objectively speaking, is a true piece... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I don't think he was used to patients who were already aware of what their real problem was. He was ... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The almost-35-year-old Terry Schmidt had very nearly nothing left anymore of the delusion that he di... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE -when he thinks of the starry-eyed puerility and narcissism of these fantasies now, a rough decade l... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE *One clue that there’s something not quite real about sequential time the way you experience it i... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Atwater knew — as did everyone at Style, though by some strange unspoken consensus it was never sa... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The reality is that dying isn’t bad, but it takes forever. And that forever is no time at all. I k... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE (..)-Dr. G. would later say that the whole "my whole life flashed before me" phenomenon at the end i... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Even as I wrote my note to Fern, for instance, expressing sentiments and regrets that were real, a p... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE If I understand you right,' he says, 'you're saying that you're basically a calculating manipulative... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE It is a fact of life that certain people are corrosive to others' self esteem simply as a function o... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of wha... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The truth is you already know what it's like. You already know the difference between the size and s... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Hell hath no fury like a coolly received postmodernist. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of cours... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE When he smoked marijuana he tended to masterbate a great deal. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I like the fans’ sound at night. Do you? It’s like somebody big far away goes like: it’sOKit�... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Here is how to turn down an extramural date so you won't be asked again. Say something like I'm terr... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE the patriotic or religious bumper stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfi... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE This, of course, is because today’s postfeminist era is also today’s postmodern era, in which su... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness �... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE We're kind of wishing some parents would come back. And of course we're uneasy about the fac... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE The other half is to dramatize the fact that we still 'are' human beings, now. Or can be. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE