Quotes from David Foster Wallace

At 63, he's witty, and smart, and he'll make fun of himself and his wife and staff and other pols and the Trail, and he'll tease the press and give them shit in a way they don't ever mind because it's the sort of shit that makes you feel that here's this very cool, important guy who's noticing you and liking you enough to give you shit.

Actually, I have never seen an average American household. Except on TV.

The adult world, in Dave's opinion, has turned out to be a basically shifty, shitty place. It's risky and often sad and always wildly insecure . It beats him over the head, just how insecure and fragile is his place in his own lifetime. He knows, now, that nearly everything you call Yours in the world can be taken away from you by other people, assuming that they want it enough.

the same Celebrity Cruises brain trust responsible for the wildly seductive brochure has decided to make certain elements of pre-embarkation as difficult and unpleasant as possible in order to sharpen the favorable contrast between real life and the 7NC experience.

And whose quiet static laughter is always appropriate, conscious, complicated by an automatic and sophisticated concern for the special sensitivities of everyone present. Viz. Bonnie laughs only with ; Carlina was so conceived and constituted as to laugh only at .

As we sometimes also say about elements of fashion and etiquette, the way you use English "makes a statement" or "sends a message"—even though these statements/messages often have nothing to do with the actual information you're trying to communicate.

A prime example of spiritual-alienation-from-land-as-factory, I posit. Except why take all the trouble to breed and train and care for a special animal and bring it all the way to the IL State Fair if you don't care anything about it? Then it occurs to me that I had bacon yesterday and am even now looking forward to my first corn dog of the Fair. I'm standing here wringing my hands over a distressed swine and then I'm going to go pound down a corn dog.

In the terrorist case, the inequivalence can be shown by proving the compatibility within the system of the following two propositions: (a) Yesterday it was possible for there to be an explosion. (b) It is not possible today that there was an explosion yesterday

What one feels when [politicians] loom into view is just an overwhelming lack of interest, the sort of deep disengagement that is often a defense against pain. Against sadness. in fact, the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians make us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard even to name, much less talk about.

These ladies are not stupid, or ignorant. Mrs. Thompson can read both Latin and Spanish, and Ms. Voigtlander is a certified speech therapist who once explained to me that the strange gulping sound that makes NBC's Tom Brokaw so distracting to listen to is an actual speech impediment called a glottal L. It was one of the ladies out in the kitchen supporting Mrs. R—- who pointed out that 11 September is the anniversary of the Camp David Accords, which was certainly news to me. What

the depressed person was frightened for herself, for as it were "[her]self "—i.e. for her own so-called "character" or "spirit" or as it were "soul

Victor Frankl? Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning?

A song of tough love for a generation whose eyes have moved fish-like to the sides of its head, forward vision usurped by a numb need to survive the now, side-placed eyes scanning for any garde of which to be avant .

1314h.: I am now seated back in Deck 8's Rainbow Room watching "Ernst," the Nadir's mysterious and ubiquitous Art Auctioneer, 118 mediate spirited bidding for a signed Leroy Neiman print. Let me iterate this. Bidding is spirited and fast approaching four figures for a signed Leroy Neiman print—not a signed Leroy Neiman, a signed Leroy Neiman print.

For the contemporarily tragic, all airports are the same: orange-faced blondes, slit-skirted stewardesses with luggage they can pull, college boys with Nazi cheekbones, the inevitable green vest of the airport-lounge bartender. Black-haired women in yellow. P.A. announcers just one mouth-marble short of incomprehensible.

Everyone around us could see the way Lyndon hung on the sound of his wife's voice, saw the tiny curtsies, her social motions, as though each movement of Lady Bird gently burst a layer of impediment between her and him.

This culture-of-watching's relation to the cycle of indulgence, guilt, and reassurance has important consequences for U.S. art

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

Marathe said, This, is it not the choice of the most supreme importance? Who teaches your U.S.A. children how to choose their temple? What to love enough not to think two times?

Orwell's famous AE translation of the gorgeous "I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift" part of Ecclesiastes as "Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account

Men who aren't enough like human beings even to hate—what one feels when they loom into view is just an overwhelming lack of interest, the sort of deep disengagement that is often a defense against pain.

Helping them eliminate the error involves drumming into student writers two big injunctions: (1) Do not presume that the reader can read your mind — anything that you want the reader to visualize or consider or conclude, you must provide; (2) Do not presume that the reader feels the same way that you do about a given experience or issue — your argument cannot just assume as true the very things you're trying to argue for.

To them, right and wrong is words, boy. He came away and eased himself into his big desk chair, sitting straight, hands out before him on the unscarred presidential cherrywood. Right and wrong ain't words, he said. They're feelings. In your guts and intestines and such. Not words. Not songs with guitars. They're what make you feel like you do. They're inside you. Your heart and digestion. Like the folks you personally love.

The terminal has that too-suddenly-hushed feeling of the moment after loud music stops.