You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life is ephemeral and fraught with existential risks, urging us to recognize our mortality.
David Foster Wallace's quote reflects on the precariousness of existence and the pervasive sense of impending doom that can accompany our lives. He suggests that we are constantly living in a 'slow fire'—a gradual descent toward oblivion—highlighting how life is both beautiful yet ultimately fleeting and filled with uncertainty. This serves as a poignant reminder to appreciate the present and confront the realities of our mortality.
Themes
ExistenceMortalityOblivionLifePhilosophyAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
During a deep discussion on life and death at a gathering with friends.
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.
David Foster WallaceRead
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
David Foster WallaceRead
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.
David Foster WallaceRead
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
David Foster WallaceRead
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
Similar quotes
Death is given in a kiss; the dearest kindnesses are fatal; and into this life, where one thing preys upon another, the child too often makes its entrance from the mother's corpse.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
Nothing in our lives is a mere insignificant detail to God.
Oswald ChambersRead
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.
Theodore RooseveltRead
It is so easy to be hopeful in the daytime when you can see the things you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands . . . They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against cruel walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.
Zora Neale HurstonRead
Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers.
Emile M. CioranRead
I would not be you for a kingdom.' The remark was too naïve to rouse anger; I merely said - 'Very good.' 'And what would you give to be ME?' she inquired. 'Not a bad sixpence - strange as it may sound', I replied. 'You are but a poor creature.' 'You don't think so in your heart.' 'No; for in my heart you have not the outline of a place: I only occasionally turn you over in my brain.
Charlotte BronteRead