You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
The fun of reading as "an exchange between consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff we can't normally talk about."
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reading allows for deep and meaningful conversations about complex topics.
In this quote, David Foster Wallace highlights the unique ability of reading to facilitate a connection between individuals. It suggests that literature serves as a medium through which people can engage in discussions about intricate issues and feelings that are often difficult to express in everyday conversations, thus fostering greater understanding and empathy among readers.
Themes
ReadingCommunicationLiteratureUnderstandingConnection
In practice
Example use cases
In a book club meeting, you might quote this to emphasize the deeper discussions about human experiences that reading enables.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes βEverything 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 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
Similar quotes
I started teaching when I was in my 20s because Lee Strasberg asked me to, and he didn't do that with a lot of people.
Martin LandauRead
Cultivate the habit of attention and try to gain opportunities to hear wise men and women talk. Indifference and inattention are the two most dangerous monsters that you ever meet. Interest and attention will insure to you an education.
Robert Andrews MillikanRead
Teach and practice, practice and teach - that is all we have; that is all we are good for; that is all we ever ought to do.
Ernest HolmesRead
Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey's back.
Zora Neale HurstonRead
The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.
Carl SaganRead
You only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics,you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation. To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiRead