Something to Do with Paying Attention Quotes

“He made a gesture I can't describe: 'Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality--there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth --actual heroism receives no queues up to see it. No one is interested.'
He paused again and smiled in a way that was not one bit self-mocking. True heroism is you, alone, in a designated work space. True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care--with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world. Just you and the job, at your desk. You and the return, you and the cash-flow data, you and the inventory protocol, you and the depreciation schedules, you and the numbers.' His tone was wholly matter-of-fact.”
― David Foster Wallace, Something to Do with Paying Attention

“I knew, sitting there, that I might be a real nihilist, that it wasn't always just a hip pose. That I drifted and quit because nothing meant anything, no choice was really better. That I was, in a way, too free, or that this kind of freedom wasn't actually real—I was free to choose 'whatever' because it didn't really matter. But that this, too, was because of something I chose—I had somehow chosen to have nothing to matter. It all felt much less abstract than it sounds to try to explain it. All of this was happening while I was just sitting there, spinning the ball. The point was that, through making this choice, I didn't matter, either. I didn't stand for anything. If I wanted to matter—even just to myself—I would have to be less free, by deciding to choose in some kind of definite way. Even if it was nothing more than an act of will.”
― David Foster Wallace, Something to Do with Paying Attention