David Foster Wallace

"To suffer is to be alive; to be alive is to suffer."

"The so-called 'good life' is lived in service to something beyond yourself."

"There is no more important practice than the practice of attention."

"The so-called 'psychotically depressed' person might be sad, but they're not *irrational* about their sadness."

"We're always sort of fragments until we really understand what we're about."

"The real problem is that we have to choose something to devote our lives to, which is terrifying."

"Entertainment keeps us from feeling our own pain and despair."

"The hardest thing is feeling okay enough, just okay enough, to go on."

"Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff."

"The so-called 'good life' is actually quite terrible when examined closely."

"What am I doing, and why does any of it matter?"

"The ability to be bored is actually the foundation of civilization."

"We are dying from overthinking about living."

"If your head is full of stuff you're trying to hold onto, there's no room for anything new."

"The so-called 'real world' is not nearly as good as what I made up."

"Modern life seems to require a certain blindness to the reality around us."

"The moment I realize what I'm doing is insane, it's already too late."

"We're all lonely in our own way."

"The hard thing about being a writer is not the writing part."

"Most of us are absolutely terrified of real intimacy."

"Television is the biggest distraction from authentic experience."

"Understanding comes from having to figure things out yourself."

"The parts of me that used to think I was different are gone now."

"Everything is a decision, and so most of life is about deciding."

"You can't really know what it's like to be anyone else."

"The so-called 'real world' operates mostly on fear."

"Maybe the most creative act is deciding what to pay attention to."

"Most people die without ever really living."

"The gift of your attention is the most valuable thing you can give."

"Learning to think is really learning what to do with your attention."