Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

by David Foster Wallace

You can tell how bored the performers are by the way their faces light up when they see someone they know.

orgasm—that most unguarded and purely neural of expressions, the one so vulnerable that for centuries you basically had to marry a person to get to see it.

scoping out attractive women 20 while the host moans and chews his knuckle in lust.

informs us that he is and always has been adult video’s “cutting-edge blade,” and that other less bold and original filmmakers have systematically stolen and used his,

deeply alone, alone the way only an emotional solipsist can be alone.

a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without even once having loved something more than yourself.

It never once occurs to him, though, that the reason he’s so unhappy is that he’s an asshole.

humor as something you get—the same way we’ve taught them that a self is something you just have.