Status Updates From String Theory: David Foster...

"And that those who receive and act out the gift of athletic genius must, perforce, be blind and dumb about it - and not because blindness and dumbness are the price of the gift, but because they are its essence."

"As is so often SOP with the truth, there's a cruel paradox involved. It may well be that we spectators, who are not divinely gifted as athletes, are the only ones able to truly see, articulate, and animate the experience of the gift we are denied."

"The real, many-veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great player's mind as he stands at the center of hostile crowd-noise and lines up the free-throw that will decide the game might well be: nothing at all."

"The real secret behind top athletes' genius, then, may be as esoteric and obvious and dull and profound as silence itself."

"The real secret behind top athletes' genius, then, may be as esoteric and obvious and dull and profound as silence itself."

"We were both in the fugue-state that exhaustion through repetition brings on, a fugue-state I've decided that my whole time playing tennis was spent chasing, hypnotic, a mental stage at once flat and lush, numbing and yet exquisitely felt."

Ok, I now understand that David Foster Wallace's brilliant String Theory prose is best enjoyed and can only approach digestion when exuberantly read aloud in a strong, steady voice. Try it. It's exhilarating.