Quotes by Dave Eggers

“People are strange, but more than that, theyre good. Theyre good first, then strange.”

“Status in itself is criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.”

“Theres nothing to be gained from passive observance, the simple documenting of conditions, because, at its core, it sets a bad example. Every time something is observed and not fixed, or when one has a chance to give in some way and does not, there is a lie being told, the same lie we all know by heart but which neednt be reiterated.”

“Its not that our family has no taste, its just that our familys taste is inconsistent.”

“Through the small tall bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the tree calligraphic.”

“Our town was rigid in many ways, in terms of the uniformity of things, the colors of skin, the makes of cars, the lushness of the lawns, but on top of that it was sort of a blank canvas so-and again, I guess this is true of any child-I was ready to quickly accept the sudden and total substitutions of all I knew to be true.”

“Its our theory that everything trickles down from there, ... That if you have high salaries, good conditions, you have good support. You have a lot of communication between teachers, you pay for teachers supplemental training, and the students learn.”

“Id rather people just borrow the idea and do their own thing in their own community, ... Whenever people can just start on their own, without our imprimatur, all the better. The model works, but we dont own the patent.”

“I am myself a failed cartoonist, There are a million reasons to ruin things.”

“I dont think theres a neighborhood where more writers live. There is no neighborhood in the world - and Ive looked - with more independent bookstores in such a small area.”

“[After this interview Eggers is off to a meeting in midtown Manhattan. Then come more appointments and the following day a long drive to Pittsfield, Mass., where he will work a fund-raiser for Word Street, a tutoring center inspired by 826 NYC. His black travel bag sits at my feet like a dog begging to go for a walk.] Im trying to cut down on travel, ... But with things like this, I really dont want to say no.”

I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.

But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

We are unusual and tragic and alive.

If you dont want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. Youre taking up space, air.

There’s less need to slowly acclimate these guys to the tank,” Bailey said. “They’ll be food pretty soon, so their happiness is less important than the shark’s.

When my parents passed on, and we read their wills, we discovered something we didn’t at all expect, especially from our devoutly Catholic mother: they had both left instructions that their bodies be donated to science. We were bewildered and we were pissed. They wanted their cadavers to be used by medical students, they wanted their flesh to be cut into and their cancerous organs examined. We were breathless. They wanted no elaborate funerals, no expense incurred for such stuff – they hated wasting money or time on ceremony, on appearances. When they died there was little left – the house, the cars. And their bodies, and they gave those away. To offer them to strangers was disgusting, wrong, embarrassing. And selfish to us, their children, who would have to live with the thought of their cold weight sinking on silver tables, surrounded by students chewing gum and making jokes about the location of freckles. But then again: Nothing can be preserved. It’s all on the way out, from the second it appears, and whatever you have always has one eye on the exit, and so screw it. As hideous and uncouth as it is, we have to give it all away, our bodies, our secrets, our money, everything we know: All must be given away, given away every day, because to be human means: 1. To be good 2. To save nothing

Not that there seems to be any appropriate place to bury someone, but these municipal cemeteries, or any cemetery at all for that matter, like the ones by the highway, or the ones in the middle of town, with all these bodies with their corresponding rocks - oh its just too primitive and vulgar, isnt it? The hole, and the box, and the rock on the grass? And we glamorize this process, feel it fitting and dramatic, austerely beautiful, standing there by the hole as we lower the box. Its incredible. Barbaric and base.

He must trust, and he must have faith. And so he builds, because what is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith?

You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This does not break me.