David Foster Wallace

"Cynicism masquerades as sophistication."

"The young person's job is to figure out who they are when everyone around them has an investment in them being someone else."

"Television is the anti-drug."

"What we call the real world is just a way of agreeing about delusion."

"Hope is the most dangerous thing in the human heart."

"The pursuit of happiness is the root of unhappiness."

"We love irony because it lets us not commit."

"The ability to be alone is the prerequisite for the ability to love."

"What makes life unbearable is the refusal to accept what is."

"Addiction is the opposite of connection."

"The comfortable become invisible."

"What we fear most is our own power."

"The self is the only real prison."

"Despair is the luxury of the privileged."

"The unexamined life isn't worth living, but neither is the overly examined one."

"Meaning requires commitment."

"The modern world traffics in distraction."

"You have to want it badly enough."

"The greatest gift you can give is your attention."

"We are all terminal cases."

"The paradox is that enforced fun is not fun."

"What kills us is the inability to endure the mundane."

"The beautiful thing about fiction is that it can make the familiar strange."

"Solidarity is not imposed but chosen."

"The worst thing is not to be alone, but to feel alone while with others."

"Language is how we make meaning."

"What we mistake for depth is often just complexity."

"The real injury is the psychological one."

"Self-pity is the default human position."

"The trick is to live without being destroyed by it."