“Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude - but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense.” MayPersonsFactsCoursesSoundExistenceAdultsImportanceSentencesAbstractNonsenseDay To DayTrenchesPlatitudesLife Or DeathHyperbole Author:David Foster Wallace
“But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.” IfsThinkingPersonsForceStarsPayAttentionCompassionSituationHellFireTypeAll ThingsSacredUnitySurfaceMeaningfulConsumersPay AttentionLoudLitCrowded Author:David Foster Wallace
“If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default-setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying.” IfsKnowsWantPersonsImportantRealityPossibilitySettingLike MeSettingsAnnoyingPointlessDefault Author:David Foster Wallace
“This is not a matter of virtue-it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.” PersonsSelfMatterHardNaturalVirtueSettingSettingsLensesSelf CenteredDefault Book:This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life Source: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
“Probably the most dangerous thing about college education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract arguments inside my head instead of simply paying attention to what's going on right in front of me. TC mark” PersonsLostStuffMy OwnAttentionCasesDangerousFrontsCollegeArgumentMarkTendenciesPay AttentionAbstractDangerous ThingsCollege Education Author:David Foster Wallace
“Most of the writers I know are weird hybrids. There's a strong streak of egomania coupled with extreme shyness. Writing's kind of like exhibitionism in private. And there's also a strange loneliness, and a desire to have some kind of conversation with people, but not a real great ability to do it in person.” PeopleKnowsWritingKindPersonsRealDesireStrongAbilityLonelinessStrangeConversationExtremesShynessStreaksHybridExhibitionismEgomania Author:David Foster Wallace
“Dostoevsky wrote fiction about identity, moral value, death, will, sexual vs. spiritual love, greed, freedom, obsession, reason, faith, suicide. And he did it without ever reducing his characters to mouthpieces or his books to tracts. His concern was always what it is to be a human being—that is, how to be an actual *person*, someone whose life is informed by values and principles, instead of just an especially shrewd kind of self-preserving animal.” HumansKindPersonsBookSelfReasonCharacterSpiritualLife IsValuesHuman BeingsAnimalFictionMoralPrinciplesIdentityConcernSuicideGreedObsessionReducingMoral ValuesSpiritual LoveMouthpiece Author:David Foster Wallace
