You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the profound loneliness and despair experienced by those suffering from depression, emphasizing the difficulty in expressing that pain.
David Foster Wallace's quote illustrates the deep anguish of depression, where the individual's suffering is compounded by an inability to communicate their inner turmoil. It underscores the haunting isolation that can accompany such mental pain, suggesting that the struggle to articulate one's feelings can intensify the horror of the experience. The quote invites empathy and understanding for those who endure such silent battles.
Themes
DepressionPainCommunicationIsolationMental Health
In practice
Example use cases
During a mental health awareness event, you might share this quote to highlight the struggles of those with depression.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes →Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
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It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
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Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
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Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
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Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
David Foster WallaceRead
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I have a feeling I shall go mad. I cannot go on longer in these terrible times. I shan't recover this time. I hear voices and cannot concentrate on my work. I have fought against it but cannot fight any longer.
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