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Dave Eggers Quotes

Dave Eggers quote from classy quote

I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Carpe Diem Love

But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Fatalism Love

If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Harsh Truth Life Philosophy

There’s less need to slowly acclimate these guys to the tank,” Bailey said. “They’ll be food pretty soon, so their happiness is less important than the shark’s.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Acclimation Food Happiness Predator Shark

When my parents passed on, and we read their wills, we discovered something we didn’t at all expect, especially from our devoutly Catholic mother: they had both left instructions that their bodies be donated to science. We were bewildered and we were pissed. They wanted their cadavers to be used by medical students, they wanted their flesh to be cut into and their cancerous organs examined. We were breathless. They wanted no elaborate funerals, no expense incurred for such stuff – they hated wasting money or time on ceremony, on appearances. When they died there was little left – the house, the cars. And their bodies, and they gave those away. To offer them to strangers was disgusting, wrong, embarrassing. And selfish to us, their children, who would have to live with the thought of their cold weight sinking on silver tables, surrounded by students chewing gum and making jokes about the location of freckles. But then again: Nothing can be preserved. It’s all on the way out, from the second it appears, and whatever you have always has one eye on the exit, and so screw it. As hideous and uncouth as it is, we have to give it all away, our bodies, our secrets, our money, everything we know: All must be given away, given away every day, because to be human means: 1. To be good 2. To save nothing

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Death Humanity

Not that there seems to be any appropriate place to bury someone, but these municipal cemeteries, or any cemetery at all for that matter, like the ones by the highway, or the ones in the middle of town, with all these bodies with their corresponding rocks - oh it's just too primitive and vulgar, isn't it? The hole, and the box, and the rock on the grass? And we glamorize this process, feel it fitting and dramatic, austerely beautiful, standing there by the hole as we lower the box. It's incredible. Barbaric and base.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Cemetery Death Funeral

He must trust, and he must have faith. And so he builds, because what is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith?

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Build Faith Hurricane Katrina Nonfiction

You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This does not break me.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Authorship Confessions Giving Reading Writing

I had forgotten that, and so many things. How could I put everything down on paper? It seemed impossible. No matter what, the majority of life would be left out of this story, this sliver of a version of the life I'd known. But I tried anyway.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Page 432 Sudan Writing

How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated then found hugely comforting.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers America Knowledge

Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Books Time

I hung up the phone, jubilant, and threw myself into a wall, then pretended to be getting electrocuted. I do this when I'm very happy.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Funny

He was warm, partly because he had on many layers, and partly because boys whoa re part wolf and part wind do not get cold.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Cute Funny Smile

Then he got more books. He saved all the books.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Books

All we really want is for no one to have a boring life, to be impressive, so we can be impressed. ~ on the friends we choose.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Friendship

Maybe he hadn't thought the war through. It had seemed like simple fun when he had first pictured it, with a glorious beginning, a difficult but valor-filled middle, and a victorious end. He hadn't accounted for the fact that there might not be much of a resolution to the battle, and he hadn't imagined what it would feel like when the war just sort of ended, without anyone admitting defeat and congratulating him for his bravery.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Childrens Militarism War

This morning there s first a predictable story about Darfur; an expert on African affairs notes that seven thousand African Union troops patrolling a region the size of France have been ineffectual in preventing continued janjaweed terror. Funding for the troops is about to run out, and it seems that no one, including the United States, is ready to put forth more money or come up with new ideas to stop the killing and displacement. This is not surprising to those of us who lived through twenty years of oppression by the hands of Khartoum and its militias.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Darfur Page 417 Sudan War

Max had to think about these new developments. He hadn't liked getting hit by a rock--his stomach still ached from then rock Judith had thrown--but then again, when his team had used rocks on Alexander, it had caused him to surrender. Now the Bad Guys only had three soldiers left, which would make victory for Max's team more likely. So now it made perfect sense. He was wrong to ban rocks, or even animals. The key was to use all the weapons at one's disposal, but to just make sure you won when you used them.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Childrens Militarism War

This war has made racists of too many of the and too many of us, and it is the leadership in Khartoum that has stoked this fire, that has brought to the surface, and in some cases created from whole cloth, new hatreds that have bred unprecedented acts of brutality.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Page 131 Sudan War

Your memory has always been given to opportunistic revision.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Humour Memory

The world, every day, is New. Only for those born in, say, 1870 or so, can there be a meaningful use of the term postmodernism, because for the rest of us we are born and we see and from what we see and digest we remake our world. And to understand it we do not need to label it, categorize it. These labels are slothful and dismissive, and so contradict what we already know about the world, and our daily lives. We know that in each day, we laugh, and we are serious. We do both, in the same day, every day. But in our art we expect clear distinction between the two...But we don't label our days Serious Days or Humorous Days. We know that each day contains endless nuances - if written would contain dozens of disparate passages, funny ones, sad ones, poignant ones, brutal ones, the terrifying and the cuddly. But we are often loathe to allow this in our art. And that is too bad...

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Art Inspirational Life

My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely cool. And while I can forget anything of any importance--this is why people tell me secrets--my mind has an uncanny knack for organization when it comes to pain. Nothing tormenting is ever lost, never even diminished in color or intensity or quality of sound.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Memory Pain

This was a new skill she'd acquired, the ability to look, to the outside world, utterly serene and even cheerful, while, in her skull, all was chaos.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Chaos Deceit Deception Faking Faking Being Happy Faking Happiness Faking Normal Hiding Hiding Feelings Hiding The Truth Mind Pretend Pretend Happiness Pretending Pretending It S Okay

Ty swept his arms around, encompassing everything around them, the vast campus above. “All this. The fucking shark that eats the world.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Shark Social Media Surveillance The Circle World

I was trying to make the web more civil. I was trying to make it more elegant. I got rid of anonymity. I combined a thousand disparate elements into one unified system. But I didn’t picture a world where Circle membership was mandatory, where all government and all life was channeled through one network.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Anonymity Civil Elegant Government Social Media The Circle Web World

I worry about exposing him to bands like Journey, the appreciation of which will surely bring him nothing but the opprobrium of his peers. Though he has often been resistant - children so seldom know what is good for them - I have taught him to appreciate all the groundbreaking musicmakers of our time - Big Country, Haircut 100, Loverboy - and he is lucky for it. His brain is my laboratory, my depository. Into it I can stuff the books I choose, the television shows, the movies, my opinion about elected officials, historical events, neighbors, passersby. He is my twenty-four-hour classroom, my captive audience, forced to ingest everything I deem worthwhile. He is a lucky, lucky boy! And no one can stop me.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Children Parenting

People say I talk slowly. I talk in a way sometimes called laconic. The phone rings, I answer, and people ask if they’ve woken me up. I lose my way in the middle of sentences, leaving people hanging for minutes. I have no control over it. I’ll be talking, and will be interested in what I’m saying, but then someone—I’m convinced this what happens—someone—and I wish I knew who, because I would have words for this person—for a short time, borrows my head. Like a battery is borrowed from a calculator to power a remote control, someone, always, is borrowing my head.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Dave Eggers Fiction You Shall Know Our Velocity

Everyone will be tracked, cradle to grave, with no possibility of escape.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Fiction Fiction Near Reality Frightening Science Fiction Social Media Technology Threats To Privacy

I was born into a town and a family and the town ad my family happened to me. I own none of it. It is everyone's. It is shareware. I like it, I like having been a part of it, I would kill or die to protect those who are part of it, but I don not claim exclusivity. Have it Take it from me. Do with is what you will. Make it useful. This is like making electricity from dirt; it is almost too good to be believed, that we can make beauty from this stuff.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Experience Life Living Stories

We are all feeding from each other, all the time, every day.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Creativity Originality Theft

Director of Ensuring the Future

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Future Future Prediction Technology

The idea we came up with, well before we left, was something we coined Performance Literature. Excuse the use of that second word, because I realize it's presumptuous. Also, excuse the first word, and the term in general.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Apologies Literature

I will tell these stories...because to do anything else would be something less than human. I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don't want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Inspirational Stories Words

How lame this is, how small, terrible. Or maybe it is beautiful. I can't decide if what I am doing is beautiful and noble and right, or small and disgusting.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Dark Human Condition Life And Living

Always we learn things and then we forget them.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Forgetting Learning

I lost someone very close to me and afterward I believed I could have saved him had I been a better friend to him. But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Loss

I should probably get a stone. A stone would be good. A stone would save me, would salvage all the damage we had already done, all the things we had given up or lost.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Hope Loss Regret Salvation

Grief doesn't arrive on schedule, as much as we'd like to.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Grief

I was feeling everything much too much. Everything was pulling at my eyes. I spent hours floating in pools. I sat on terraces and stared for afternoons at mediocre views. I was feeling overjoyed for happy couples. I would see or hear about people, usually people I hardly knew or didn't even like, getting together, finding each other after so much groping, and I would feel bliss. I was blindsided by familiar things.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Grief

The men who are dropped in a jungle or a desert and expected video games and got mundanity and depravity and friends dying like animals.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Animals Depravity Desert Friends Jungle Men Mundanity
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