[…] his own father told him that talent is sort of a dark gift, that talent is its own expectation: it is there from the start and either lived up to… - David Foster Wallace

She took a sort of abject pride in her mecilessness toward herself.

"And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don’t really mean what I’m saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.

This is why they started us here so young: to give ourselves away before the age when the questions 'why' and 'to what' grow real beaks and claws.