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Dave Eggers Quotes

Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is the husband of writer Vendela Vida with whom he has two children. He wrote the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Eggers is also the founder of McSweeney's, a literary journal, a co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness, and the founder of ScholarMatch, a program that matches donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in several magazines. Wikipedia  

✵ 12. March 1970  •  Other names دیو اقرز
Dave Eggers photo

Works

The Circle
The Circle
Dave Eggers
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
What Is the What
What Is the What
Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers: 91 quotes2 likes

Famous Dave Eggers Quotes

“You know how you finish a bag of chips and you hate yourself? You know you’ve done nothing good for yourself. That’s the same feeling, and you know it is, after some digital binge. You feel wasted and hollow and diminished.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Source: The Circle

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

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Source: The Circle

“At that moment I was sure. That I belonged in my skin. That my organs were mine and my eyes were mine and my ears, which could only hear the silence of this night and my faint breathing, were mine, and I loved them and what they could do.”

Dave Eggers

“But of course there's no logic to San Francisco generally, a city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. It's the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“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.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Variant: If I ever fall in love again, 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.
Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 21, pp. 317-318
Source: What Is the What
Context: I cannot count the times I have cursed our lack of urgency. If I ever love again, 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.

“I hung up the phone, jubilant, and threw myself into a wall, then pretended to be getting electrocuted. I do this when I'm very happy.”

Dave Eggers

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Dave Eggers Quotes about people

“And there is a chance that everything we did was incorrect, but stasis is itself criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.”

Dave Eggers

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

“I have no idea how people function without near-constant internal chaos. I'd lose my mind.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“First of all, Iit’s all people like you. And that’s what’s so scary. you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Source: The Circle

“I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? 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.”

Dave Eggers

Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 26, pp. 474-475

“Most people would trade everything they know, everyone they know - they'd trade it all to know they've been seen, and acknowledged, that they might even be remembered/ We all know we die. We all know the world is too big for us to be significant. So all we have is the hope of beign seen, or heard, even for a moment.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Mae, to Kalden/Ty; p. 490
The Circle (2013)

“I was a looker someone who looked over at every car at every traffic light, hoping something would happen, and almost never finding anyone looking back- always everyone looking forward, and every time I felt stupid. Why should people look over at you? Why would they care?”

Dave Eggers

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

Dave Eggers: Trending quotes

“Every time my brain parks the car neatly in the driveway, my mouth drives through the back of the garage.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Source: The Circle

“We are unusual and tragic and alive.”

Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Quotes

“But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What Is the What

“We have advantages. We have a cushion to fall back on. This is abundance. A luxury of place and time. Something rare and wonderful. It's almost historically unprecedented. We must do extraordinary things. We have to. It would be absurd not to.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“All I ever wanted was to know what to do.”

Dave Eggers

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

“You invite things to happen. You open the door. You inhale. And if you inhale the chaos, you give the chaos, the chaos gives back.”

Dave Eggers

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

“Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 10, p. 110
Source: What Is the What

“His lies were so exquisite I almost wept.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What Is the What

“It is no way to live, to wait to love.”

Dave Eggers

“Why do you want to be on The Real World?
-Because I want everyone to witness my youth

Why?
-Isn't it gorgeous?”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“Once a year, she remembers that she is insignificant. Then she forgets agains, because more than she is insignificant, she is forgetful.”

Dave Eggers

Source: How the Water Feels to the Fishes

“If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“All we really want is for no one to have a boring life, to be impressive, so we can be impressed. ~ on the friends we choose.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“Goddamn sometimes I only want this feeling to stay and last.”

Dave Eggers book How We Are Hungry

Source: How We Are Hungry

“I see colors like you hear jet planes.”

Dave Eggers book How We Are Hungry

Source: How We Are Hungry

“Why did we do that to Pluto? We had it good with Pluto.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

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

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“Be strong, be brave, be true. Endure.”

Dave Eggers Zeitoun

Source: Zeitoun

“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.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Source: The Circle

“Thank you," he says.
"Thank who?"
"I don't know. You?"
"No, not me.."
"Thank you, Jesus?"
"Yes, Toph, Jesus died for your Christmas fun.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“I was feeling everything too much. Everything was pulling at my eyes.”

Dave Eggers

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

“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.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“3. There are bears and there are small dogs. Be strong like bear! If they take out your teeth, sit on the dogs. Bears always forget they can just sit on the dogs. Sit on the dogs.”

Dave Eggers You Shall Know Our Velocity

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity

“Pain comes at me and I take it, chew it for a few minutes, and spit it back out. It's just not my thing anymore.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“Every part of my body felt electric. My chest ached and my head throbbed with the great terrible limitless possibility of the morning, and when it came, the sky was washed white, everything was new, and I hadn't slept at all.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What Is the What

“Here I am Rock You Like a Hurricane.”

Dave Eggers

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

“It all meant something. Until it didn't.”

Dave Eggers book A Hologram for the King

Source: A Hologram for the King

“How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated then found hugely comforting.”

Dave Eggers

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

“Love is implicit in every connection. It should be. Thus when absent it makes us insane. (You Shall Know Our Velocity)”

Dave Eggers

“my feeling is that if you're not self-obsessed you're probably boring.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Variant: Still though, I think if you're not self-obsessed, you're probably boring.
Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“We are all feeding from each other, all the time, every day.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“This boy thinks I am not of his species, that I am some other kind of creature, one that can be crushed under the weight of a phone book.

The pain is not great, but the symbolism is disagreeable.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What Is the What

“You can't ever guess at life, at pain. All pain is real, and all pain is personal. It's the most personal thing we have. It eats each of us differently.”

Dave Eggers

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

“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?”

Dave Eggers

“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.”

Dave Eggers book Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

Source: Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“We would oppose the turning of the planet and refuse the setting of the sun.”

Dave Eggers

Source: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

“The key thing is managed awareness of your role in the world and history. Think too much and you know you are nothing. Think just enough and you know you are small, but important to some. That's the best you can do.”

Dave Eggers book A Hologram for the King

Source: A Hologram for the King

“Good artists exist in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“I had the sensation that I might always be running like this, that I would always have to run, and that I would always be able to run.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What Is the What

“But what I really want is to just swim around in a warm baby pool of these friends, jump in their dry leaf pile-to rub them all over myself, without words and clothes.”

Dave Eggers

“You’re like part human, part rainbow.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

The Circle

“I live because I do not exist.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

What Is the What

“You and yours at the Circle, you're gonna save all the souls. You're gonna get everyone in one place, you're gonna teach them all the same things. There can only be one morality, one set of rules. Imagine! Now all humans will have the eyes of God. You know this passage? 'All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of God.' Something like that. You know your Bible? Now we're all God. Every one of us will soon be able to see, and cast judgment upon, every other. We'll see what He sees. We'll articulate His judgment. We'll channel His wrath and deliver His forgiveness. On a constant and global level. All religion has been waiting for this, when every human is a direct and immediate messenger of God's will. Do you see what I'm saying?”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Man, to Mae and Francis; pp. 398-399
The Circle (2013)

“Listen John—’
‘Who’s John?’
‘You’re John.’
‘I’m John?’
‘Yeah, I changed your name.”

Dave Eggers

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“If there's a locked door, I start to make up all kinds of stories about what might be behind it. I feel like it's some kind of secret, and it leads to me making up lies. But if all the doors are open, physically and metaphorically, there's only the one truth.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Mae, to Bailey; p. 299
The Circle (2013)

“Mr. Churchill you were given a mission.
— Yes
— I want to have been given your mission. I want your place in world events, the centrality of it. You were born in the cradle of a catapult!
— You are wrong. I found my mission.
— I disagree.
— If you must.
— Tell me: where is my mission? Where are my bunkers and trenches, my goddamn Gallipoli?”

Dave Eggers

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

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