Eric > Eric's Quotes

“People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night. I carry this thought, the child's mystery and terror of this thought, I feel this immensity in my soul every second of my life.”
― Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis

“There are dead stars that still shine because their light is trapped in time. Where do I stand in this light, which does not strictly exist?”
― Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis

“Shit is universal no matter which language.”
― Don DeLillo, Ratner's Star

“The less important you are in an office, the more they expect the happy smile.”
― Don DeLillo, Libra

“If you know you're worth nothing, only a gamble with death can gratify your vanity.”
― Don DeLillo, The Angel Esmeralda

“The less there was to see, the harder he looked, the more he saw.”
― Don DeLillo, Point Omega

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.”
― Thomas Pynchon

“Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength.”
― Thomas Pynchon

“The general public has long been divided into two parts; those who think that science can do anything and those who are afraid it will.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

“But with a sigh he had released her hand, while she was so lost in the fantasy that she hadn't felt it go away, as if he'd known the best moment to let go.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“It all comes down, as it must, to the desires of individual men. Oh, and women too of course, bless their empty little heads.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“Keep cool but care”
― Thomas Pynchon, V.

“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“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.”
― David Foster Wallace, Oblivion

“You have decided being scared is caused mostly by thinking.”
― David Foster Wallace

“This is so American, man: either make something your god and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.”
― David Foster Wallace

“The integrity of my sleep has been forever compromised, sir.”
― David Foster Wallace

“It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“I am concentrating docilely on the question why U.S. restrooms always appear to us as infirmaries for public distress, the place to reagain control.”
― David Foster Wallace

“This is another paradox, that many of the most important impressions and thoughts in a person's life are ones that flash through your head so fast that fast isn't even the right word, they seem totally different from or outside of the regular sequential clock time we all live by, and they have so little relation to the sort of linear, one-word-after-another word English we all communicate with each other with that it could easily take a whole lifetime just to spell out the contents of one split-second's flash of thoughts and connections, etc. -- and yet we all seem to go around trying to use English (or whatever language our native country happens to use, it goes without saying) to try to convey to other people what we're thinking and to find out what they're thinking, when in fact deep down everybody knows it's a charade and they're just going through the motions. 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 part of it at any given instant.”
― David Foster Wallace

“If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“...morning is the soul's night.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“What TV is extremely good at—and realize that this is "all it does"—is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it.”
― David Foster Wallace

“The thing about people who are truly and malignantly crazy: their real genius is for making the people around them think they themselves are crazy. In military science this is called Psy-Ops, for your info.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“...logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Mediocrity is contextual.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Though it is not often that death is so clearly told to fuck off.”
― Pynchon Thomas