“I live because I do not exist.”

—  Dave Eggers , book What Is the What

What Is the What

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I live because I do not exist." by Dave Eggers?
Dave Eggers photo
Dave Eggers 91
memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher 1970

Related quotes

Pablo Neruda photo

“If suddenly you do not exist,
If suddenly you are not living,
I shall go on living.

I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.

I shall go on living.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet
Richard Bach photo

“I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Vladimir Nabokov photo

“For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor
Nicole Krauss photo

“Only now that my son was gone did I realize how much I'd been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed, and when I ordered food it was because he existed, and when I wrote my book it was because he existed to read it.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Richard Rodríguez photo

“If I ask questions about religion that my grandparents didn’t ask, it is not because I am intellectually advanced. I wonder about the existence of God because, unlike my grandparents, I live much of my day in a secular city where I do not measure the hours with the tolling bells of a church.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Martin Sheen photo

“I do it because I can't seem to live with myself if I do not. I don't know any other way to be.”

Martin Sheen (1940) American actor

On his activism in social justice and peace issues.
2000s, Progressive magazine interview (2003)
Context: I do it because I can't seem to live with myself if I do not. I don't know any other way to be. It isn't something you can explain; it is just something that you do; it is something that you are.

Harper Lee photo

“You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the world
acknowledge that women like me exist, and we possess a dangerous wisdom.”

Patrick Califia-Rice (1954) American writer

Variant: Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the world acknowledge that women like me exist, and we possess a dangerous wisdom.

“I have no wish to argue, Father. Yet it must be said that the monks exist here in peace and security only because of the swords of the defenders. I do not belittle your views — I wish all men shared them. But they do not. … if all men and women lived as you and I, there would be no children, and no humanity. What then would be the Will of the Source?”

David Gemmell book Quest for Lost Heroes

Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 2

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès photo

“I have survived or I existed or I lived”

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836) French ''abbé'' ad statesman

J'ai vécu.
After the Reign of Terror, when asked what he had done during that period; variously reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), "Life", p. 453; "War", p. 857.

Related topics