Quotes from Dave Eggers

It only takes one person, one small act of stepping from the dark to the light.

Money is ephemeral, moving from person to person, it's a tool. Don't let it get into your heart or soul.

I often cannot believe the things I do.

My voice and movements are restricted by the things I own.

If you think I'm annoying and preachy now, you should have known me in grade school.

But that's one lifetime. Yeah. But while doing that one I'd want to be able to have done other stuff. Whole other lives- the one where I sail- I know, on a boat you made yourself.

The issue is complex, but like many matters in Sudan, it is not as complex as Khartoum would want the west to believe.

It's the usual utopian vision. This time they were saying it'll reduce waste. If stores know what their customers want, then they don't overproduce, don't overship, don't have to throw stuff away when it's not bought. I mean, like everything else you guys are pushing, it sounds perfect, sounds progressive, but it carries with it more control, more central tracking of everything we do.

She felt some measure of relief knowing that in the very least, on the open road she would have some time to think.

The author would also like to acknowledge makers of comic book villains and superheroes, those who invented, or at least popularized, the notion of the normal, mild-mannered person transformed into a mutant by freak accident.

She pulls away, pats me on the shoulder with three mini-pats, like those used to pet reptiles.

I am the Olympics.

Keep the money in your hand, never in your heart.

Existing, period – that is what drives men to irrational acts.

The death of a young person for no reason is an apocalypse.

The water was not God. The water undulating slightly with the waves unformed was not spiritual. It was jagged cold water and it felt perfect when we put our hands into it, and it kissed out palms again and again, would never stop kissing our palms — and why wasn't that enough?

We want everyone to follow their dreams, their hearts (aren't they bursting, like ours?); we want them doing things that we will find interesting.

The Earth is an animal that shakes off its fleas when they dig too deep, bite too hard. It shifts and our cities fall; it sighs and the coasts are overtaken.

In hospitals I feel palpable comfort. I feel the competence, the expertise, so much education and money, all of the supplies sterile, everything packaged, sealed tight. My fears evaporate when the automatic doors shush open.

There has not been a beautiful death in the history of mankind.

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.

There is no faith like the faith of a builder of homes in coastal Louisiana

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.

We both see strangers and react. We don't like to walk by people without nodding. We're broken when people are rude. Were broken when people can't meet us halfway. We can't accept the limits of normal human relations-chilly, clothed, circumscribed. Our hearts pull against their leashes.