“I'm just afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN.”

— David Foster Wallace , book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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David Foster Wallace 185

American fiction writer and essayist 1962–2008

Sol Kerzner (1935) South African businessman

Sunday Times interview (1980s)

“Love always creates, it never destroys. In this lies man's only promise.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

p 127
LOVE (1972)

“I find that people who believe in immortality—or at least those who say they do—are just as afraid of death as anybody else. I find that the most devout Christian weeps as bitterly above his dead, as the man who says that death ends all. You see the promises are so far away, and the dead are so near. Still, I do not say that man is not immortal; but I do say that there is nothing in the Bible to show that he is. The Old Testament has not a word upon the subject—except to show us how we lost immortality.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

“I felt something like the man on the resurrection morning who was reading his own tombstone and said either someone is an awful liar or I'm in the wrong hole.”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

August 3,1961, NDP Leadership Convention http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFmD3U2s7tI.

“Listen, this is crazy. I look like I'm 75 years old. Nobody wants to watch an old man being funny. That's just a fact. No one wants to see this old man on TV.”

Larry David (1947) American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer

When his show went onto a high definition channel.
Interview, Esquire, September 18, 2009 http://www.esquire.com/features/the-screen/larry-david-interview-0709

“The old man nodded, as if his neck was afraid of the weight of his head.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 2

“I think we're past the time in history where you have to come out and say, "you know I'm just happy all the time! I'm a joker, I'm a crazy man!"”

Jim Carrey (1962) Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer

you know kind of thing. I think people understand I can turn that switch on but I'm also a sensitive, normal human being with feelings and I know how to express those too.
Fun with Dick & Jane: An Interview with Jim Carrey http://www.blackfilm.com/20051216/features/jimcarrey.shtml by Wilson Morales in Features, BlackFilm.com (December 2005)

“One day I'll be old, dead, forgotten. And at this very moment, while I'm sitting here thinking these things, a man in a dingy hotel room is thinking, "I will always be here."”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Regina to herself, p. 28
All Men are Mortal (1946)

“I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

“Bite on the bullet, old man, and don't let them think you're afraid.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Light That Failed http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/TheLightThatFailed/index.html, ch. 11 (1890-1891).
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“I'm just afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN.”

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