“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myri...”

“To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe its because dullness is intri...”

“When people call it [depression] I always get pissed off because I always think depression sounds like you just get like really sad, you get quiet and melancholy and just like sit quietly by the wi...”

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worsh...”

“Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits th...”

“Let me put it this way: You cannot live in the world without being in pain, spiritual and physical pain. We have developed mechanisms to deal with these pains, to overcome them somehow. Therapy, re...”

“95 percent of political commentary, whether spoken or written, is now polluted by the very politics its supposed to be about. Meaning its become totally ideological and reductive: The writer/speake...”

“And then also, again, still, what are those boundaries, if theyre not baselines, that contain and direct its infinite expansion inward, that make tennis like chess on the run, beautiful and infinit...”

“David Foster Wallace: Because I'd like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time instead of having to go back in my head and enjoy them then.”

“But what was there to say?Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely t...”

“Trees quiver in the wind,sailing on a sea of mistout of earshot.”

“Just for future reference, don't use words like "love" anymore. It's a very sensitive word and it wears out quickly. Romeo barely says it, but John Hinckley filled up a whole journal with it. To pu...”

“Promise YourselfTo be so strong that nothingcan disturb your peace of mind.To talk health, happiness, and prosperityto every person you meet.To make all your friends feelthat there is something in ...”

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”