Dave Eggers quotes - page 4

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)
We sleep when we fall. We only sleep when we can't move anymore. That's juvenile. But it means everything. It's the illusion of progress. Staying awake isn't progress. The illusion is enough. View quote
Dave Eggers
But that in any city, in any cluster of people, there a few people who are awake at this hour, who are both awake and dancing, and it's here that we need to be. That if we are living as we were this week, that we had to be awake with the people who are still dancing. View quote
Dave Eggers
There are people who meet strangers and people, like me, who know only those they've known from birth. View quote
Dave Eggers
When everything is known, everything acceptable will be accepted. View quote
Dave Eggers
What did we want? We want the world smaller and bigger and just the same but advancing. We don't know what we want. View quote
Dave Eggers
Matter of fact, the first three or four chapters are all some of you might want to bother with. That gets you to page 123 or so, which is a nice length, a nice novella sort of length. View quote
Dave Eggers
We'd have a motherfucking shitload of dogs! Horses. Peacocks. Oh to live among peacocks. I'd seen them once in person and they defied so many laws of color and gravity that they had to be made geniuses waiting to take over everything. View quote
Dave Eggers
I don't mean to beat a made-in-America drum, but I would be lying if I said it doesn't feel somehow right to be printing books in the U.S. View quote
Dave Eggers
It was selfish and nothing more. The same way a child doesn't want to share her favorite toy. I understand that secrecy is part of, well, an aberrant behavior system. It comes from a bad place, not a place of light and generosity. And when you deprive your friends, or someone like your son Gunner, of experiences like I had, you're basically stealing from them. You're depriving them of something they have a right to. Knowledge is a basic human right. Equal access to all possible human experience is a basic human right. View quote
Dave Eggers
What would transparency be if we could delete anything we felt was embarrassing in some way? You know we don't delete. (Dave Eggers)
Don't you see that's just one of the consequences of all this? There will be more Mercers. So many more. So many people who do't want to be found but who will be. So any people who wanted no part of all this. That's what's new. There used to be the option of opting out. But now that's over. Completion is the end. We're closing the circle around everyone - it's a totalitarian nightmare. View quote
Dave Eggers
You sit at a desk twelve hours a day and you have nothing to show for it except some numbers that won't exist or be remembered in a week. You're leaving no evidence you lived. There's no proof. View quote
Dave Eggers
Thank you," he says. "Thank who?" "I don't know. You?" "No, not me.." "Thank you, Jesus?" "Yes, Toph, Jesus died for your Christmas fun. View quote
Dave Eggers
Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. View quote
Dave Eggers
Some of these kids just don't plain know how good they are: how smart and how much they have to say. You can tell them. You can shine that light on them, one human interaction at a time. View quote
Dave Eggers
The key thing is, even if you only have a couple of hours a month, those two hours shoulder-to-shoulder, next to one student, concentrated attention, shining this beam of light on their work, on their thoughts and their self-expression, is going to be absolutely transformative, because so many of the students have not had that ever before. View quote
Dave Eggers
Suffering is only suffering if it's done in silence, in solitude. Pain experienced in public, in view of loving millions, was no longer pain. It was communion. View quote
Dave Eggers
Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college. View quote
Dave Eggers
I think almost every writer in the world would hope that books would be always talked about with respect and civility and depth and seriousness. View quote
Dave Eggers
But I'm thinking about 12 things at once, a hundred thousand times a day. Most people do, I would imagine. (Dave Eggers)
I think there's a future where the Web and print coexist and they each do things uniquely and complement each other, and we have what could be the ultimate and best-yet array of journalistic venues. View quote
Dave Eggers
I've purposely stayed away from reading much about postmodern theory, and most everything I have read just bored me to tears. I don't think anybody's written about it, or very few have, with any verve. View quote
Dave Eggers
The only thing that everyone needs to look out for is keeping the students reading through high school and thereafter. View quote
Dave Eggers
Also, I need deadlines, just like everybody else, especially coming from magazines, newspapers, and stuff like that. I need daily or weekly deadlines to get stuff done, or I continue to do things and not go off on a year of unproductivity. View quote
Dave Eggers