Quotes About Understanding

There's a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn't happen all the time. It's these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone—intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don't with other art.

Booboo, we've been over this. I can't be asleep if we're talking.

you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. That

You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. That is real freedom. That is being educated and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race.

Julie le ha dicho a Faye que cree que los amantes pasan por tres fases distintas cuando empiezan a conocerse bien. Primero intercambian anécdotas y gustos. Después se cuentan las cosas en que creen. Y luego cada uno examina la relación entre lo que el otro dice que cree y lo que hace en realidad.

Julie ha detto a Faye che lei è convinta che due persone innamorate attraversino tre fasi distinte prima di arrivare a conoscersi davvero. All'inizio si raccontano aneddoti e gusti personali. Poi ciascuno dei due dice all'altro in che cosa crede. E poi ciascuno osserva la relazione che c'è fra quello in cui l'altro ha detto di credere e quello che in effetti fa .

It's when people begin to fancy that they actually know something about literature that they cease to be literarily interesting, or even of any use to those that are.

Or that he's slow, Hal's brother is, technically, Stanford-Binet-wise, slow, the Brandeis C.D.C. found---but not, verifiably not, retarded or cognitively damaged or bradyphrenic, more like refracted, almost, ever so slightly epistemically bent, a pole poked into mental water and just a little off and just taking a little bit longer, in the manner of all refracted things.

and he can feel his heart going out into the world...

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace

By simple definition. Every telling creates and limits and defines.

That—to cut to a chase which the interviewers' hands-on-hip attitudes and replacement of the lamp's bulb with a much higher wattage signified they'd very much like to see cut to—as

sentence-by-sentence basis—that it's okay if a person

Julie has told Faye that she believes lovers go through three different stages in getting really to know one another. First they exchange anecdotes and inclinations. Then each tells the other what she believes. Then each observes the relation between what the other says she believes and what she in fact does.

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

Me imitaba cuando yo estaba molesto -solamente el amor de la vida de uno puede hacer esto- y a mí se me pasaba el enfado

You just never quite occurred out there, kid,' deLint apprises him.

You just never quite occurred out there, kid.

David Foster Wallace

It may be that mathematics is not generally recognized as one of the arts precisely because so much pyramidal training and practice is required in order to appreciate its aesthetics; math is perhaps the ultimate in acquired tastes.

Certain things not only can't be taught but can be retarded by other stuff that can be taught.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it's just words.

My husband laughed without smiling. He looked at the last of the sun-colored water as we approached the Brooklyn Bridge's system of angled shadow. Because if no one is really the way we see them, I said, that would include me. And you. Rudy admired the sunset out loud. He said it looked explosive, hanging, all round, just slightly over the water. Reflected and doubled in that bit of river. But he'd been looking only at the water. I'd watched him.