You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our thoughts and feelings are complex and cannot be fully captured by language.
This quote by David Foster Wallace expresses the idea that the inner workings of our minds are incredibly intricate and expansive, making it nearly impossible for words to encompass their full depth. It highlights the limitations of language in capturing the vastness of human experience, suggesting that any attempt to articulate these feelings can only provide a mere glimpse or outline of the realities we perceive internally.
Themes
ThoughtsLanguageComplexityExperienceMind
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about mental health, this quote can emphasize the complexity of emotions.
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.
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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 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
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