Write to exhaustion so that you can no longer manage to avoid writing the truth.

Anthony Doerr again takes language beyond mortal limits.

You know what they say - sleep is the mother's drug of choice, but like heroin, only the very rich and the very poor can afford it.

A single girl who needs nobody makes people uncomfortable, and my mom is right in this, appearance is everything, and appearing to have no one is like swimming alone in the middle of the ocean with a flesh wound.

Write to exhaustion so that you can no longer manage to avoid writing the truth.

By investing others with the power to dictate who you are, you rob yourself of an opportunity to truly grow.

While Max appears to greatly admire Wallace as a writer and feel compassion for him as a man, he is never starry-eyed, or pulls his punches. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story is as illuminating, multifaceted, and serious an estimation of David Foster Wallace's life and work as we can hope to find.