Quotes from Dave Eggers

I always like the idea of doing interviews with somebody but completely seriously not ever mentioning what that person is generally known for.

You treat a kid with respect and as an adult you talk to them as if they're smart people. But you don't throw at them the trappings of adulthood and you know, the darker stuff.

Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don't, right?

They were so in love with the world, and so disappointed in every aspect of it.

I think I'm far too hopeful and trusting. That's something I got from my mum.

WHEN we don't get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don't blame the soldiers.

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.

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.

I had grown up as a fan of Studs Terkel. In Chicago he sort of looms large and is mentioned often.

But while mum and dad were incredibly caring, it was also a very chaotic household where everyone fought about everything. So I know what it's like to internalize all that chaos.

But you know, there's something about the kids finishing their homework in a given day, working one-on-one, getting all this attention - they go home, they're finished. They don't stall, they don't do their homework in front of the TV.

When anybody starts out with a memoir, you get the impulse to tell your own story with your own voice, and you get all that out in one fell swoop sometimes.

You might not be able to operate your own Learjet and have an unlimited expense account, but if you have a reasonable expectation for a print-based product, whether it's a newspaper or a magazine, you can certainly exist.

I need eight hours to get maybe 20 minutes of work done. I had one of those yesterday: seven hours of self-loathing.

But there was something psychological happening there that was just a little bit different. And the other thing was, there was no stigma. Kids weren't going into the 'Center-for-Kids-That-Need-More-Help' or something like that. It was 826 Valencia.

They took my mother's stomach out six months ago.

People are strange, but more than that, they're good. They're good first, then strange.

I worked at Salon.com way back when they started, and there's just unmeasurable value to distributing words online, too, but I still get my news from the newspaper in the morning.

I am a bike enthusiast; there's a certain amount of romance to bikes. They're both beautiful and utilitarian.

If your hand doesn't work for it, your heart doesn't feel sorry for it.

When I'm doing work online or on the computer, it's one thing. When I want to read, I want to go elsewhere, and I want to be away from the screen.

Every time I get through the work on a book of nonfiction, I say I'll never do it again; it takes so much out of you.

I really believe strongly that kids should be spared the runoff of their parents' lives and problems.

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.