Quotes from Dave Eggers

Now, you and I both know that if you can control the flow of information, you can control everything. You can control most of what anyone sees and knows. If you want to bury some piece of information, permanently, that's two seconds' work. If you want to ruin anyone, that's five minutes' work.

The desert wind was strong, and the dust came over the street like fog. Still, two men were sweeping the road.

The inactive must justify their sloth by picking nits with those making an attempt—

She looked at Max, grinning for a moment. Wow, I can't even look at you. She closed her eyes tightly. Why? Max asked. Her eyes remained closed, a wide smile on her face. I don't know. I guess you just seem good. What do you mean? he asked. She opened one eye, just a sliver. Yeah, wow. It's almost unbearable.

Don't flatter yourself to think this is your doing. Your problem is that you think things have happened for the first time to you, and that you're the fulcrum from which all people and the current world pivot.

To struggle is to strengthen my faith, my hope and my belief in humanity.

It looked a lot like a dog. What's that? Max asked, expecting to hear about a mythical creature with a mythical name. Carol squinted and put his hand over his eyes to see better. Oh that's a dog, he said. I don't talk to that guy anymore.

The money that could have saved the Shuttle, and the money we send to random countries, that we use to remake unchangeable countries ten thousand miles away.

This book is a form of struggle, and it keeps my spirit alive to struggle.

Every day some scientist discovered a new species of frog or waterlily, and that, too, seemed to confirm some divine showman, some celestial inventor putting new toys before us, hidden but hidden poorly, just where we might happen upon them.

Dan nodded emphatically, as if his mouth had just uttered, independently, something that his ears found quite profound.

In her life Josie had heard only one or two people apologize. Wasn't that something? Wouldn't that be significant to future anthropologists? This was a time in history when no one was sorry. Sorry took too much courage, too much strength and faith and rightness to have a place in this cowardly century.

Apparently some on on the Bad Guys' side had balled up this animal named Larry, and had thrown him at Max's team. Max couldn't decide whether he should band the use of animal projectiles or not. But before he could make a decision and as Larry began to scurry off dizzily, Carol grabbed him, balled him up again, and hurled him back. There was a shriek from the Bad Guys' camp. Larry, you traitor!

PRIVACY IS THEFT

There is travel and there are babies, he said, stepping out. Everything else is drudgery and death.

Some of the bank people were so young they'd never seen a business proposal suggesting manufacturing things in the state of Massachusetts. They thought they'd unearthed some ancient shaman, full of clues to a forgotten world.

They started a great fire in the middle of the market, and from this fire they took burning logs and torches, and these they threw onto the roofs of most of the homes within a one-mile radius. The few men who resisted were shot. This was effectively the end of any kind of life in Marial Bai for some time. Again, the rebels for whom this was retribution were nowhere to be found.

Carol turned around quickly as if stifling an urge to lunge at Max. He turned back to Max, straining to appear genial. Okay, he said, but will you come over here and put your head in my mouth again? Max continued to back up, No, Carol. I don't want to right now.

How old are you?" the woman asked. "You look about eleven." "Twenty-four," Mae said. "My god. You don't have a mark on you. Were we ever twenty-four, my love?" She turned to the man, who was using a ballpoint pen to scratch the arch of his foot. He shrugged, and the woman let the matter drop.

She backed away, looking at him, his shirt hiked up, his crotch exposed. She could think only of a campfire, one small log, all of it doused in milk.

Coffee could be smelled and tasted and touched. And it was a commodity, recession-proof. Next to gasoline, it might be one of the most recession-proof commodities of all.

I didn't care anymore what my ancestors would think. We were the Red Army and needed to eat.

cause of the coma was still a subject of some debate, Dr. Villalobos had said, but most likely, it was caused by stress

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.