David Foster Wallace

everybody identical beliefe different unique

“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

freedom attention awareness discipline effort care unsexy

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

concerned other people think seldom

“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

psycoticalled depressed suicide window jump fire terror

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

acceptance fatigue

“Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.”

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

lonely people allergic affect strongly

“Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly.”

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

logical validity guarantee truth

“...logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.”

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

learning think control attention meaning experience hosed

“Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.

It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

shaped broken learn failure student game attention running

“You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. ... How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away.”

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

doubt parent cruel forgotten cildren

“I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten.”

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

substance addict thinking compulsive unhealthy

“...most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.”

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

fidelity perfectionism high

"If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything."

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

kindness real genuine agendaless

"There is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness."

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

TV good people think they want supply broadcasting

"What TV is extremely good at - and realize that this is 'all it does' - is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it."

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

anything close attention interesting

"Almost anything that you pay close, direct attention to becomes interesting."

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

not dead dreaming ourselves

"We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves."

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

obvious ubiquitous important reality hardest see talk about

"...the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about."

― David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)