The greatest sin is appearing naive or old-fashioned so that somebody can give you a sort of a very cool arch smile and devastate you with one extraordinarily crafted line that puts kind of a hole in your pretentious balloon.
David Foster WallaceTwo young salmon are swimming along one day. As they do, they are passed by a wiser, older fish coming the other way. The wiser fish greets the two as he passes, saying, "Morning boys, how's the water?" The other two continue to swim in silence for a little while, until the first one turns to the other and asks, "What the hell is water?"
David Foster Wallace....basically the sort of guy who looks entirely at home in sockless white loafers and a mint-green knit shirt from Lacoste.
David Foster WallaceBoo, I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants or vampires or whatever. I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away.
David Foster WallaceYou have wondered, perhaps, why all real accountants wear hats? They are today's cowboys. As will you be. Riding the American range. Riding herd on the unending torrent of financial data. The eddies, cataracts, arranged variations, fractious minutiae. You order the data, shepherd it, direct its flow, lead it where it's needed ... You deal in facts, gentlemen, for which there has been a market since man first crept from the primeval slurry.
David Foster Wallace