And all of this was meant to be beneath me

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How come she never got sad?”
“She did get sad, Booboo. She got sad in her way instead of yours and mine. She got sad, I’m pretty sure.”
“Hal?”
“You remember how the staff lowered the flag to half-mast out front by the portcullis here after it happened? Do you remember that? And it goes to half-mast every year at Convocation? Remember the flag, Boo?”
“Hey Hal?”
“Don’t cry, Booboo. Remember the flag only halfway up the pole?
Booboo, there are two ways to lower a flag to half-mast. Are you listening? Because no shit I really have to sleep here in a second. So listen - one way to lower the flag to half mast is just to lower the flag. There’s another way though. You can also just raise the pole. You can raise the pole to like twice its original height. You get me?
You understand what I mean, Mario?”
“Hal?”
“She’s plenty sad, I bet.

— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

Tags: /Infinite Jest

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Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties — all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name’s Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion — these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

— David Foster Wallace

Tags: /Infinite Jest /art /fiction

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Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he’s devoted to than he does about he objects and pursuits themselves. It’s hard to say for sure wheher this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.

— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (p. 54)

Tags: /Infinite Jest