Dave Eggers Quotes

92 Sourced Quotes

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.

Dave Eggers
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
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
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
She pulls away, pats me on the shoulder with three mini-pats, like those used to pet reptiles.

Dave Eggers
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.

Dave Eggers
Everyone in the life before was cranky, I think, because they just wanted to know. —After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned

Dave Eggers
Suffering is only suffering if it's done in silence, in solitude. Pain experienced in public, in view of loving millions, was no longer pain. It was communion.

Dave Eggers
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
We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns burst from the darkness, from the grasping void of space that folds and swallows—a darkness that would devour anyone not as strong as we. We are oddities, sideshows, talk show subjects. We capture everyone's imagination.

Dave Eggers
The voice of the nickly reflection of the moon was not as deep as you might expect. It was a singer's voice, though, a tenor, one that loved itself without reservation. I feel time like you dream. Your dreams are jumbled. You can't remember the order of your dreams, and when you recall them, the memories bend. Faces change. It's all in puddles and ripples. That's what time is for me.

Dave Eggers
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
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
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
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
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
I was feeling everything too much. Everything was pulling at my eyes.

Dave Eggers
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
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
It's not that our family has no taste, it's just that our family's taste is inconsistent.

Dave Eggers
What are we allowed to do when we're looking for things we're required to do?

Dave Eggers
... I'll raise my arms and give you my chest and throat and wait, and I've been so old for so long for you, for you, I want it fast and right through me— Oh do it, do it you motherfuckers do it you fuckers finally, finally, finally.

Dave Eggers
Once a year, she remembers that she is insignificant. Then she forgets again, because more than she is insignificant, she is forgetful.

Dave Eggers
We would oppose the turning of the planet and refuse the setting of the sun.

Dave Eggers
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
First Of All:
I am tired.
I am true of heart!

And Also:
You are tired.
You are true of heart!

Dave Eggers
The pain is not great. But the symbolism is disagreeable.

Dave Eggers
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
Nothing again. No one is listening. No one is waiting to hear the kicking of a man above. It is unexpected. You have no ears for someone like me.

Dave Eggers
It was always difficult to get cattle returned once a marriage was dissolved.

Dave Eggers