Quotes from David Foster Wallace

Mark has been more comfortable with the general drift of a conversation before, lots of times. What if the stories that really stab him are really other people's stories? What if they're bullshit? What if he alone isn't clued into this, and there's no way to know ?

My feelings just started to change. It wasn't all him. It took time, but after time passed I felt something was missing, and I'm selfish, I can only feel like I'm giving more than I'm getting for so long, then things change.

That no matter how smart you thought you were, you are actually way less smart than that.

To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.

It takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak.

The way I think about things and experience things is not particularly linear, and it's not orderly, and it's not pyramidical, and there are a lot of loops.

If you worship power, you will feel weak and afraid, needing ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.

Please learn the pragmatics of expressing fear: sometimes words that seem to express really invoke. This can be tricky.