That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, … - David Foster Wallace

Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden.

...in real life I always seem to have a hard time winding up a conversation or asking somebody to leave, and sometimes the moment becomes so delicate and fraught with social complexity that I'll get overwhelmed trying to sort out all the different possible ways of saying it and all the different implications of each option and will just sort of blank out and do it totally straight — 'I want to terminate the conversation and not have you be in my apartment anymore' — which evidently makes me look either as if I'm very rude and abrupt or as if I'm semi-autistic and have no sense of how to wind up a conversation gracefully...I've actually lost friends this way.