If you worship power, you will feel weak and afraid, needing ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.
David Foster WallaceI have always tried to avoid talking to pretty girls, because pretty girls have a vicious effect on me in which every part of my brain is shut down except for the part that says unbelievably stupid things and the part that is aware that I am saying unbelievably stupid things.
David Foster WallaceThe Sophists had this idea: Forget this idea of what's true or notโwhat you want to do is rhetoric; you want to be able to persuade the audience and have the audience think you're smart and cool. And Socrates and Plato, basically their whole idea is, "Bullshit. There is such a thing as truth, and it's not all just how to say what you say so that you get a good job or get laid, or whatever it is people think they want.
David Foster WallaceI felt despair. The wordโs overused and banalified now, despair, but itโs a serious word, and Iโm using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture โ a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. Itโs maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But itโs not these things, quite. Itโs more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that Iโm small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. Itโs wanting to jump overboard.
David Foster Wallace