You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the individual's perception of their own significance in the vastness of existence.
David Foster Wallace's quote reflects the human tendency to view oneself as the focal point of their own universe. It underscores a profound belief in one's own experiences and existence, suggesting that each person feels uniquely significant in their own life narrative, even in the face of a broader, often indifferent universe.
Themes
Self-ImportancePerceptionExistenceIndividualityUniverse
In practice
Example use cases
A motivational speech about self-worth and significance in personal struggles.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes βIt 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 youβve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and itβs like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
David Foster WallaceRead
The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates.
David Foster WallaceRead
Similar quotes
And I think both the left and the right should celebrate people who have different opinions, and disagree with them, and argue with them, and differ with them, but don't just try to shut them up.
Roger EbertRead
Personality begins where comparison ends.
Karl LagerfeldRead
Those who have a why to live for can bear almost any how. The necessary premise is that a person is somehow more than his or her "characteristics," all the emotions, strivings, tastes, and constructions which it pleases us to call "My Life." We have grounds to hope that a Life is something more than a cloud of particles, mere facticity. Go through what is comprehensible and you conclude that only the incomprehensible gives any light.
Saul BellowRead
I deplore the horrible crime as child murder....no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent,the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed...but oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which compelled her to the crime.
Susan B. AnthonyRead
There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.
Hunter S. ThompsonRead
What we really are is a community of mind, knitted together by codes and symbols, intuitions, aspirations, histories, hopes - the invisible world of the human experience is far more real to us than the visible world, which is little more than a kind of stage or screen on which we move.
Terence MckennaRead