Quotes About Introspection

My own terror of appearing sentimental is so strong that I've decided to fight against it, some; but the terror is still there. . . . Do you identify with a distaste/fear about sentimentality? Do you agree that, past a certain line, such distaste can turn everything arch and sneering and too ironic? Or do you have your own set of abstract questions to drive yourself nuts with?

T]he worst kind of nihilist—the kind who isn't even aware he's a nihilist.

But I gotta tell you, I just think to look across this room and automatically assume that somebody else is less aware than me, or that somehow their interior life is less rich and complicated and acutely perceived than mine, makes me not a good writer. Because that means I'm going to be performing for a faceless audience instead of trying to have a conversation with a person.

That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.

Two hearted, a hypocrite to yourself either way

Defining yourself in opposition to something is still being anaclitic on that thing, isn't it?

La verdad es lo que te hará libre. Pero no hasta que haya acabado contigo.

Sometimes he finds out he believes something that he doesn't even know he believed until it exits his mouth

I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is more like confused.

Perhaps this is what it means to go mad: to be emptied and to be aware of the emptiness.

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.

From that day, whether I could articulate it satisfactorily or not,' Day says, holding the knee of the leg just crossed, 'I understood on an intuitive level why people killed themselves. If I had to go for any length of time with that feeling I'd surely kill myself.' 'Time in the shadow of the wing of the thing too big to see, rising.

Don't worry about getting in touch with your feelings, they'll get in touch with you.

Am I happy? is one of those questions that, if it has got to be asked, more or less dictates its own answer.

Everybody who really wants to knows what's true. Most people just don't want to. It means listening from deep inside. Most people just don't want to. But the special people listen. You can hear what's true, inside. Listen.

That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.

If I'm hanging out with you, I can't even tell whether I like you or not because I'm too worried about whether you like me.

He was unsure what the thing inside him was and was unprepared to commit himself to the course of action that would be required to explore the question.

He just sits there. I want to be like that. Able to just sit all quiet and pull life toward me, one forehead at a time. His name is supposedly Lyle.

This is what happens: you imagine the things I will say and then say them for me and then become angry with them. Without my mouth; it never opens. You speak to yourself, inventing sides. This itself is the habit of children: lazy, lonely, self. I am not even here, possibly, for listening to.

David Foster Wallace

The placid hopelessness of adulthood. The complex regret.

just the thought of getting up made me glad I was lying on the floor.

David Foster Wallace