Quotes from book

Infinite Jest

“Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith…. Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care.”

“she committed suicide by putting her extremities down the garbage disposal-first one arm and then, kind of miraculously if you think about it, the other arm.”

“Be on guard. The road widens, and many of the detours are seductive.”

“Mediocrity is contextual.”

“That it is statistically easier for low-IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high-IQ people… That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them.”

“I like the fans’ sound at night. Do you? It’s like somebody big far away goes like: it’sOKit’sOKit’sOKit’sOK, over and over. From very far away.”

“Yes, I'm paranoid — but am I paranoid enough?”

“And Lo, for the Earth was empty of Form, and void. And Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep. And We said: 'Look at that fucker Dance.”

“Mary had a little lamb, its fleece electrostatic / And everywhere Mary went, the lights became erratic.”

“It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.”

“There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us - these are just the hazards of being free”

“I'm screaming for help and everybody's acting as if I'm singing Ethel Merman covers…”

“… perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it.”

“… morning is the soul's night.”

“It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again.”

“My bones are ringing the way sometimes people say their ears are ringing, I'm so tired.”

“They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier.”

“life's endless war against the self you cannot live without.”

“The thing about people who are truly and malignantly crazy: their real genius is for making the people around them think theyare crazy. In military science this is called Psy-Ops, for your info.”