You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
I don't want to hurt myself. I want to stop hurting.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a desire to cease suffering rather than inflict harm on oneself.
David Foster Wallace highlights a fundamental human wish to overcome pain and seek an end to suffering, emphasizing that the true goal is not self-harm but healing. This sentiment resonates deeply with those who may struggle with emotional turmoil, urging introspection and the pursuit of relief and understanding rather than destructive behaviors.
Themes
PainSufferingHealingEmotionalSelf-Help
In practice
Example use cases
In a mental health seminar discussing coping mechanisms.
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.
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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 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
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
When dams were erected on the Columbia, salmon battered themselves against the concrete, trying to return home. I expect no less from us. We too must hurl ourselves against and through the literal and metaphorical concrete that contains and constrains us, that keeps us from talking about what is most important to us, that keeps us from living the way our bones know we can, that bars us from our home. It only takes one person to bring down a dam.
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Simply having the courage to say senseless things made me euphoric. I was free, with no need to seek or to give explanations for what I was doing. This freedom lifted me to the heavens - where greater love, one that forgives everything and never allows you to feel abandoned, once again enveloped me.
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To struggle when hope is banished! To live when life's salt is gone! To dwell in a dream that's vanished- To endure, and go calmly on!
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I think my biggest achievement is that, after going through a rather difficult time, I consider myself comparatively sane.
Jackie KennedyRead