“To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention.… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
The entire ball game, in terms of both the exam and life, was what you gave attention to vs. what you willed… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Whatever you get paid attention for is never what you think is most important about yourself. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“Be on guard. The road widens, and many of the detours are seductive.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Almost anything that you pay close, direct attention to becomes interesting. — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention...it will actually be within your power to experience a crowded,… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“The bilateral illusion of unilateral attention was almost infantilely gratifying from an emotional standpoint: you got to believe you were receiving somebody's… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“I felt more solidly composed, now that I was horizontal. I was impossible to knock down.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological erasure.” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
Footnote: 79) The anchor is gigantic and must weigh a hundred tons, and -- delightfully -- it really is anchor-shaped, i.e. the same shape… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“The paradoxical intercourse of audience and celebrity. The suppressed awareness that the whole reason ordinary people found celebrity fascinating was that they were not,… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“I am coming to see that the sensation of the worst nightmares, a sensation that can be felt asleep or awake, is identical to… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“He cranks the condo’s AC way down at night and still most mornings wakes up soaked, fetally curled, entombed in that kind of psychic… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“If you’re subjected to enough great salesmen and salespitches and marketing concepts for long enough—like from your earliest Saturday-morning cartoons, let’s say—it is only… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“Why is the truth usually not just un- but anti-interesting?” — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
“She almost reminds the engineer of certain types in high school whom everyone adored because you sensed it made no difference to them whether… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
To be, in a word, unborable.... It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you… — David Foster Wallace Copy Share Image
