Dave Eggers citations

Page 2

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Here I am Rock You Like a Hurricane.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“Yes, a dark time passed over this land, but now there is something like light.”

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

“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.”

“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 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.”

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

“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”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“What is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith?”

“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.”

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

“I live because I do not exist.”

“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?”

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