I was always either so unreasonably and pointlessly happy that no one place could seem to contain me, or so melancholy, so sick and silly with sadness that there was no place I could stomach the thought of entering. I hated it here. And I have never been as happy as when I was here.
Rick Vigorous describing Amherst, from David Foster Wallace’s “The Broom of the System”
If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency & love, & pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend.
David Foster Wallace, quoted in David Lipsky’s “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself”
Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? This is a craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you.
David Foster Wallace, “Infinite Jest”