We’re all terribly, terribly lonely. And there’s a way, at least in prose fiction, that can allow you to be intimate with the world and with a mind and with characters that you just can’t be in the real world. — David Foster Wallace, Whiskey Island, Spring, 1993.
Please learn the pragmatics of expressing fear: sometimes words that seem to express really invoke. — David Foster Wallace. Infinite Jest. (Back Bay Books; 1st Paperback Ed edition February 1, 1997)
He says when he tries to pray he gets this like image in his mind’s eye of the brainwaves or whatever of his prayers going out and out, with nothing to stop them, going, going, radiating out into like space and outliving him and still going and never hitting Anything out there, much less Something… Continue reading David Foster Wallace
Among pernicious myths is the one where people always get very upbeat and generous and other-directed right before they eliminate their own map for keeps. The truth is that the hours before a suicide are usually an interval of enormous conceit and self-involvement. ― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest. (Back Bay Books; 1st Paperback Ed… Continue reading David Foster Wallace
No time is passing outside you at all. It is amazing. The late ballet below is slow motion, the overbroad movements of mimes in blue jelly. If you wanted you could really stay here forever, vibrating inside so fast you float motionless in time, like a bee over something sweet. —David Foster Wallace, from “Forever… Continue reading David Foster Wallace
Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking? — David… Continue reading David Foster Wallace
And Lo, for the Earth was empty of Form, and void. And Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep. And We said: ‘Look at that fucker Dance.’ —David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest. (Back Bay Books; 1st Paperback Ed edition February 1, 1997)
