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Dave Eggers Quotes
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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
Dave Eggers: 91 quotes2 likes

Dave Eggers Quotes

“It was selfish and nothing more. The same way a child doesn't want to share her favorite toy. I understand that secrecy is part of, well, an aberrant behavior system. It comes from a bad place, not a place of light and generosity. And when you deprive your friends, or someone like your son Gunner, of experiences like I had, you're basically stealing from them. You're depriving them of something they have a right to. Knowledge is a basic human right. Equal access to all possible human experience is a basic human right.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Mae, to Bailey; p. 303
The Circle (2013)

“Under the guise of having every voice heard, you create mob rule, a filterless society where secrets are crimes.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Kalden/Ty, to Mae; p. 488
The Circle (2013)

“Ooh, look at me, I’m Dave, I’m writing a book! With all my thoughts in it. La la la!”

Dave Eggers

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“What are we allowed to do when we’re looking for things we’re required to do?”

Dave Eggers

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

“First of all:
I am tired.
I am true of heart!

And also:
You are tired.
You are true of heart!”

Dave Eggers

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“And we will be ready, at the end of every day will be ready, will not say no to anything, will try to stay awake while everyone is sleeping, will not sleep, will make the shoes with the elves, will breathe deeply all the time, breathe in all the air full of glass and nails and blood, will breathe it and drink it, so rich, so when it comes we will not be angry, will be content, tired enough to go, gratefully, will shake hands with everyone, bye, bye, and then pack a bag, some snacks, and go to the volcano.”

Dave Eggers

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“Openness is all, she thought. Truth was its own reward.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Source: The Circle (2013), p. 449

“It was not knowing that was the seed of madness, loneliness, fear. But there were ways to solve all this. Clarity had made her knowable to the world, and had made her better, had brought her close, she hoped, to perfection. Now the world would follow. Full transparency would bring full access, and there would be no more not-knowing. Mae smiled, thinking about how simple it all was, how pure. Bailey shared her smile.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Source: The Circle (2013), p. 470

“I am sorry Chris is late this morning. I could make something up about an appointment or a sickness, but the fact is that we woke up late. Go figure
Best,
Brother of Toph.”

Dave Eggers

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“Hand took a breath and opened his palms, as if accepting the gift of rain. "YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY!" he bellowed into the cold exhausted city.”

Dave Eggers

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

“Don't you see that's just one of the consequences of all this? There will be more Mercers. So many more. So many people who do't want to be found but who will be. So any people who wanted no part of all this. 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.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Kalden/Ty, to Mae; p. 486
The Circle (2013)

“When we pass by another person without telling them we love them it’s cruel and wrong and we all know this.”

Dave Eggers

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

“We’re best at the long high throws. Like when you take four or five steps and rip it— It’s almost like a shotput approach, the steps, four or five quick, one over the other, kind of sideways-like—and then you slash away with that fucker, it’s such a violent act, throwing that white thing, you’re first cradling it to your breast and then you whip that fucker as hard as you can while keeping it level, keeping it straight, but otherwise with everything you can send with it you whip that fucker like it had blades on it and you wanted it to cut straight through the paperblue sky like a screen, rip through it and have it be blood and back space beyond.”

Dave Eggers

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“It's not that I'm not social. I'm social enough. But the tools you guys create actually manufacture unnaturally extreme social needs. No one needs the level of contact you're purveying. It improves nothing. It's not nourishing. It's like snack food. You know how they engineer this food? They scientifically determine precisely how much salt and fat they need to include to keep you eating. You're not hungry, you don't need the food, it does nothing for you, but you keep eating these empty calories. This is what you're pushing. Same thing. Endless empty calories, but the digital-social equivalent. And you calibrate it so it's equally addictive.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Mercer, to Mae; p. 134
The Circle (2013)

“The pain is not great. But the symbolism is disagreeable.”

Dave Eggers

Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 5, pp. 50

“We sleep when we fall. We only sleep when we can’t move anymore. That’s juvenile. But it means everything. It’s the illusion of progress. Staying awake isn’t progress. The illusion is enough.”

Dave Eggers

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

“But that in any city, in any cluster of people, there a few people who are awake at this hour, who are both awake and dancing, and it’s here that we need to be. That if we are living as we were this week, that we had to be awake with the people who are still dancing.”

Dave Eggers

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

“What would transparency be if we could delete anything we felt was embarrassing in some way? You know we don't delete.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Eamon Bailey, to Mae; p. 372
The Circle (2013)

“We cannot fathom why people would stand across the street, easily a hundred feet away, when they could be so close, near us.
‘Suckers.’ I tell Toph, thumbing toward those watching from so far away. It is important, I feel, that the boy knows what suckers look like.”

Dave Eggers

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“There are people who meet strangers and people, like me, who know only those they’ve known from birth”

Dave Eggers

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

“When everything is known, everything acceptable will be accepted.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Eamon Bailey, to Mae; pp. 372-372
The Circle (2013)

“I want you to connect these dots and see if you see what I see. Picture this. The Circle has been devouring all competitors for years, correct? It only makes the company stronger. Already 90 percent of the world's searches go through the Circle. Without competitors, this will increase. Soon it'll be nearly 100 percent. Now, you and I both know that if you can control the flow of information, you can control everything. You can control most of what anyone sees and knows. If you want to bury some piece of information, permanently, that's two seconds' work. If you want to ruin anyone, that's five minutes' work. How can anyone rise up against the Circle if they control all the information and access to it? They want everyone to have a Circle account, and they're well on their way to making it illegal not to. What happens then? What happens when they control all searches, and have full access to all data about every person? When they know every move everyone makes? When all monetary transactions, all health and DNA information, every piece of one's life, good or bad, when every word uttered flows through one channel?”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Kalden/Ty, to Mae; pp. 487-488
The Circle (2013)

“What did we want? We want the world smaller and bigger and just the same but advancing. We don’t know what we want.”

Dave Eggers

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

“Matter of fact, the first three or four chapters are all some of you might want to bother with. That gets you to page 123 or so, which is a nice length, a nice novella sort of length.”

Dave Eggers

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“"I understand that we're obligated, as humans, to share what we see and know. And that all knowledge must be democratically accessible."
"It's the natural state of information to be free."”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Mae and Bailey; p. 304
The Circle (2013)

“We’d have a motherfucking shitload of dogs! Horses. Peacocks. Oh to live among peacocks. I’d seen them once in person and they defied so many laws of color and gravity that they had to be made geniuses waiting to take over everything.”

Dave Eggers

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)