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Truly decent, innocent people can be taxing to be around.

David Foster Wallace

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David Foster Wallace
Age: 45 †
Born: 1962
Born: February 21
Died: 2008
Died: February 12
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Ithica
New York
David Wallace
Taxing
Decent
Innocent
Truly
Around
People

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Most of us will still take nihilism over neanderthalism.
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The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die.
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My bones are ringing the way sometimes people say their ears are ringing, I'm so tired.
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What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves. They've got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings.
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Fiction is about what it is to be a human being.
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The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism.
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It now lately sometimes seemed a black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe.
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For me, boviscopophobia is an even stronger motive than semi-agoraphobia for staying on the ship when we're in port.
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Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.
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The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.
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You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
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The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.
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Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est (They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier).
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But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.
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In fact, the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians makes us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard even to name, much less talk about.
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There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration.
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The severing of an established connection is exponentially more painful than the rejection of an attempted connection.
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American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret.
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I find in myself a need to get very away.
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My worst character flaw that I'm conscious of is that I tend to think my way into circles instead of resolving anything. It's paralyzing and boring for people around me.
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