Progressive liberals seem incapable of stating the obvious truth: that we who are well off should be willing to share more of what we have with poor people not for the poor people's sake but for our own; i.e., we should share what we have in order to become less narrow and frightened and lonely and self-centered people.
David Foster WallaceThe 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.
David Foster WallaceThe other half is to dramatize the fact that we still "are" human beings, now. Or can be.
David Foster WallaceI just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art.
David Foster Wallace'This thing I feel, I can't name it straight out but it seems important, do you feel it too?' — this sort of direct question is not for the squeamish. For one thing, it's perilously close to 'Do you like me? Please like me,' which you know quite well that 99% of all the interhuman manipulation and bullshit gamesmanship that goes on goes on precisely because the idea of saying this sort of thing straight out is regarded as somehow obscene.
David Foster Wallace