By Elizabeth Kolbert (click on photo to read article) "It is a world where a flea bites a dog and dies...where a bee may carry poisonous nectar back to its hive and presently produce poisonous honey."
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"...and she wants me to know her, but I already do. People tell you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be."
"When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him. He has a million reasons for being anywhere. Just ask him. If you listen, he'll tell you how he got there, how he forgot where he was going and then he woke up. If you listen, he'll tell you about the time he thought he was an angel or dreamt of being perfect. And then he'll smile with wisdom, content that he'd realized the world isn't perfect. We're flawed because we want so much more. We're ruined because we get these things and wish for what we had." How to Ride an Elevator
How to Feel Like Shit How to Find Love How to Be Fat How to Be Thin How to Feel Sorry For Yourself How to Be Confident How to Fail How to Get the Job How to Shatter Shame How to See the Truth Behind the Truth How to End Your Life How to Remain Unhealed Why Having It All Is Not How to Get Over Your Addiction to the Past How to Be a Good Mental Patient How to Make Yourself Uncomfortable (And Why You Should) How to Finish Your Drink How to Hold On To Your Dream or Maybe Not How to Identify Love by Knowing What It's Not How to Live Unhappily Ever After How to Feel Less Regret How to Stop Being Afraid of Your Anger How to Be Sick How to Lose Someone You Love How to Let a Child Die How to Change the World by Yourself This is Why "If you meet somebody and they love you when you are your true, awful, not-ready yet, boring, not cool enough, not handsome enough, not pretty enough, too fat, too poor self? And if you love them back so much it makes you calm? And they have flaws and you do not mind a single one of them? That means you get yourself to the church and you pull one of those priests out of bed and you have him cast one of those wedding spells on you. If you're gay and this happens, you just might have to rent a car first and drive to one of the states that operates a few hours ahead. Because if you found that, you found it." --- "It was uncomfortable. It was only uncomfortable. And I didn't like being uncomfortable. Feeling like you cannot stand one more minute doesn't mean you can't. You can, actually. It's incredibly easy to stop smoking. And it's horrifically uncomfortable. Then not quite horrifically uncomfortable. Then it's damn uncomfortable. Then it's uncomfortable. Then it's not as uncomfortable as it was at first. Then it's not so bad. And then you don't smoke anymore. And you don't miss it." David Foster Wallace's Tax ClassesBy Seth Colter Walls (click on photo to read article) An additional clue about his thoughts regarding what genius may be obliged to owe is also included with the notes: a two-page Web-site printout of Schopenhauer's essay "On the Vanity of Existence," in which the following paragraph receives special attention from Wallace's pen:
Life presents itself first and foremost as a task: the task of maintaining itself... If this task is accomplished, what has been gained is a burden, and there then appears a second task: that of doing something with it so as to ward off boredom, which hovers over every secure life like a bird of prey. Thus the first task is to gain something and the second to become unconscious of what has been gained, which is otherwise a burden. |