You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
Fiction is about what it is to be a human being.
Interpretation
Fiction reflects the complexities of human existence and emotions.
David Foster Wallace's quote emphasizes that fiction is a vital avenue for exploring and understanding the human condition. Through stories, characters, and experiences, we can delve into the intricacies of life, revealing truths about humanity, empathy, and our shared experiences.
In practice
In a book club discussion, this quote can be used to highlight the role of storytelling in understanding diverse human experiences.
You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
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.
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
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.
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
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.
The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.
In some departments of our daily life, in which we imagine ourselves free agents, we are ruled by dictators exercising great power.
There is nothing divine about morality; it is a purely human affair. If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. What the individual can do is to give a fine example, and to have the courage to uphold ethical values .. in a society of cynics.
I condemn equally those who choose to praise man, those who choose to condemn him and those who choose to divert themselves, and I can only approve of those who seek with groans.
Looking deeply at life as it is in this very moment, the meditator dwells in stability and freedom.
Corporations are totalitarian institutions. Board of directors at the top of managers give orders, everyone follows orders..... At the very bottom of command, if you are lucky you can rent yourself to it and get a job , and if you are sufficiently propagandized you may even buy some of the junk they produce and so on.
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