Quotes by Dave Eggers

His lies were so exquisite I almost wept.

No. There is no balance, and no retribution, and no rules. The rules and balances you blather about are hopeful creations of a man fearing death.

You and I read the same books and hear the same sermons and we come away with different messages. That has to be evidence of some serious problem, right?

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

You see pictures of Buddha and he’s sitting, reclining, at peace. The Hindus have their twelve-armed elephant god, who also seems so content but not powerless. But leave it to Christians to have a dead and bloody man nailed to a cross.

The Earth is an animal that shakes off its fleas when they dig too deep, bite too hard.

It was called the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages. If not for the monks, everything the world had ever learned would have been lost. Well, we live in a similar time, when were losing the vast majority of what we do and see and learn. But it doesnt have to be that way.

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

It was just an idea I had, that it could be cool to have a book covered in fake fur.

So this is the space during tutoring hours. Its very busy. Same principles: one-on-one attention, complete devotion to the students work and a boundless optimism and sort of a possibility of creativity and ideas.

I can remember exactly where I sat when my teacher first read Roald Dahls James and the Giant Peach.

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

McSweeneys as a publishing company is built on a business model that only works when we sell physical books. So we try to put a lot of effort into the design and production of the book-as-object.

“These people have already attained, at whatever age, a degree of celebrity you a--holes will never reach, and you feel, deep down, that because there is no life before or after this, that fame is, essentially, God -- all you people know that, believe it, even if you dont admit it. As children you watched him, in the basement, cross-legged in front of the TV, and you thought you should be him, that his lines were yours, that his spot on Battle of the Network Stars was yours, that youd be so good on the obstacle course - youd win for sure! So doing all this, when hes no longer such the world-conquering celebrity, gives you power over him, the ability to embarrass him, to equalize the terrible imbalance you feel about your relationship to those who project their charisma directly, not sublimated through snarky little magazines. You and everyone like you, with your Q&As or columns or Web sites - you all want to be famous, you want to be rock stars, but youre stuck in this terrible bind, where you also want to be thought of as smart, legitimate, permanent. So you do your little thing, are read by your little coterie, while secretly seething about the Winona Ryders and Ethan Hawkes.”

“Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.”

“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.”