Lucky people develop a relationship with a certain kind of art that becomes spiritual, almost religious, and doesnโt mean, you know, church stuff, but it means youโre just never the same.
David Foster WallaceAlthough the only way that I'm well known at Illinois State is that I am the "grammar Nazi." And so any student whose deployment of a semi-colon is not absolutely Mozart-esque knows that they're going to get a C in my class, and so my classes tend to have like four students in them. It's really a lot of fun.
David Foster WallaceThe point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home.
David Foster WallaceIs it possible really to love other people? If Iโm lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential reliefโI need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isnโt a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody elseโs needs that I canโt even feel directly? And yet if I canโt do this, Iโm damned to loneliness, which I definitely donโt want โฆ so Iโm back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons.
David Foster Wallace