"Okay."

The weight of "okay" in this book is astonishing.

"It's a command-decision, babe. I'm not in command. I know they teach us to teach that this place is about seeing instead of being seen."

Many places (and participants) of improvement in society could benefit from such a concept.

If "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself" was more of a shining view of the writer, "Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story" is the balancing point. The side of Wallace that makes those unfamiliar with the effects of severe depression cringe, and at times, loathe his behavior. As a caring human of the man DFW and his works, this biography poked at pieces of me (him) that did what good fiction does: inspire understanding and change.

"...The Wittgensteinian stance that the world is nothing but observed facts, a proposition that leads, as Wallace would write [...] to the belief that 'one's head is, in some sense, the whole world.'"

"More modern approaches would set out, not to prove that the universe is the 'God' mentioned in scriptures, but to show that the universe is worthy of the deepest reverence, by comparing its real powers with the powers that people think God possesses." [Pg. 36]

"The chief obstacle to the attainment of self-consciousness is that we think we have it. One will never get self-consciousness so long as one believes that one has it. [...] We think that we have these things, and this happens because we do not know the meaning of the words we use." - Pg. 30

"'That's the way she wants doing, Jim,' my father said, clapping me on the back and exactly the ebullient way that had prompted me to have my mother by an elastic athletic cranial strap for my glasses." - Pg. 497

The way he describes without making the sentence by itself only descriptive of the thing. ??

"Philosophical initiation has occurred when one's desires and efforts are not simply for the pleasure of gaining more information. [...] A philosophical initiate therefore aims at a deeper understanding of self and our fellow human beings, and seeks to transform that understanding into wisdom." Pg. 53 - Four Categories of Masonry

Fantastic book. Very much to the point and an easy read. Not going to comment on the political aspects it alludes to (which I found to be universal in nature). I don't know that the message would be as easily read had it been a work of nonfiction. How it was portrayed is why we love novels, I suppose! But, a good read by a great author.

"Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can't fake a thought."

W/r/t the pain of sobriety and the feeling your feelings from it.

"'Getting In Touch With Your Feelings is another quilted-sampler-type cliché that ends up masking something ghastly deep and real, it turns out. (178)

178. A more abstract but truer epigram that White Flaggers with a lot of sober times sometimes change this to goes something like: "Don't worry about getting in touch with your feelings, they'll get in touch with you."

"A contemplative Mason is therefore more than an academic student of Masonry. It is easy for us to read the published works of Masonic authors who qualify as contemplatives; however, simply absorbing whatever light they may reveal does not make us contemplative masons. A true contemplative uses the faculties of the psyche as a collection of fine working tools."