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.
David Foster WallaceAnd meteorologists have nothing to tell people in Philo, who know perfectly well that the real story is that to the west, between us and the Rockies, there is basically nothing tall, and that weird zephyrs and stirs joined breezes and gusts and thermals and downdrafts and whatever out over Nebraska and Kansas and moved like streams into rivers and jets at and military fronts that gathered like avalanches and roared in reverse down pioneer oxtrails, toward our own personal unsheltered asses.
David Foster WallaceThe real irony is that the view of infinity as some forbidden zone or road to insanity - which view was very old and powerful and haunted math for 2000+ years - is precisely what Cantor's own work overturned. Saying that infinity drove Cantor mad is sort of like mourning St. George's loss to the dragon: it's not only wrong but insulting.
David Foster WallaceThe fact that the most powerful and significant connections in our lives are (at the time) invisible to us seems to me a compelling argument for religious reverence rather than skeptical empiricism as a response to life's meaning.
David Foster Wallace