Quotes from Dave Eggers

And everything that seemed possible at twenty-four, twenty-five, is now just such a joke, such a ridiculous fiction, every birthday an atrocity

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.

Am I just curious? Or do I want this? And if I did want this, what sort of person am I?

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.

And now it is boring; here in Tanzania, she is bored. She will die of a crushing monotony before she even has a chance at a high-altitude cerebral edema. —

Hundreds of Every heads were nodding in agreement. It was always good to stop things that needed to be stopped.

You don't know what it's like to be a man over thirty who's never had anything happen to him. You spend so many years trying to stay safe, stay alive, to avoid some unknown horror. Then you realize the horror is existence itself. The nothing-happening. —You were bored. —I wasn't bored. I was dying. I am dying. But this week was different. There was alignment and order and a coming-to. —

Why do you want to share your suffering? By sharing I will dilute it.

This book is a form of struggle, and it keeps my spirit alive to struggle. To struggle is to strengthen my faith, my hope and my belief in humanity.

Any Tenderloin kid was always prepared.

Our penises flop up and down, and then as we pick up speed, slap left to right, back and forth -- who would have thought left to right? The pain! People should not do this. Penises were not built for running.

Why do you want to share your suffering?' By sharing I will dilute it.

This democracy thing, or Demoxie, whatever it is, good god. Under the guise of having every voice heard, you create mob rule, a filterless society where secrets are crimes.

Dignity is an affection, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.

You have to know sadness . . . because sadness is duty . . .because if you know sadness, you understand sadness in others, and if you can understand sadness in others, you're obligated to help.

the observer is, more often than not, passive. writing chiefly about his or her surroundings, and the people he or she meets. The writer reacts, instead of acts. Well, i suppose they [travel writers] do act, in that they have to do the traveling, choose the destinations, and so forth, but again, largely they are observant cargo, being shuttled from place to place with notebook in hand.

The Most Foul were surprised and crestfallen for many minutes, finding it hard to believe that a man who had baldly stated, every day of his life, that no one was more important than himself, had in the end put himself above the rest of the passengers. He had led them to great harm and great shame, had ransacked half the ship and had allowed the ransacking of the rest, and had then escaped in a golden lifeboat without a goodbye or thank you or sorry.

It's the natural state of information to be free.

Individually you don't know what you're doing collectively.

This is something Mark Twain, or Samuel Clemens wrote, or whatever: To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art.

One of dem otters," Ana said, and waved toward the bay. She had a skull in her little pink hands, and Josie noticed with horror that it had not been picked clean. There was still cartilage on it, and whiskers, and fur, something viscous, too. Josie conjured Socrates and thought of a question. "Why in hell did you pick this up?" In solidarity, the dogs lifted their heads to Ana and Paul, then ran off.

The world is undergoing a movement toward authoritarianism, Delaney, and this is about order. People think the world is out of control. They want someone to stop the changes. This aligns perfectly with what the Every is doing: feeding the urge to control, to reduce nuance, to categorize, and to assign numbers to anything inherently complex. To simplify. To tell us how it will be. An authoritarian promises these things, too.

That small act of noticing him when no one else did. That brief act of caring. Just one person seeing another's struggle and bringing them to their feet again. It was the difference between a cold world of being forever apart and a world where one could feel bound to another. Obligated to kindness.

Those who smile with their eyes are surely the most likeable of people.