Dave Eggers Quotes - Page 7

So I should be aware of the dangers of self-consciousness, but at the same time, I’ll be plowing through the fog of all these echoes, plowing through mixed metaphors, noise, and will try to show the core, which is still there, as a core, and is valid, despite the fog. The core is the core is the core. There is always the core, that can’t be articulated. Only caricatured.

But the grind has begun. The windows don’t open, and even the availability of near-constant jokes about Jews and Mormons fails to stem the tide of frustration, decay. We’ve reached the end of pure inspiration, and are now somewhere else, something implying routine, or doing something because people expect us to do it, going somewhere each day because we went there the day before, saying things because we have said them before, and this seems like the work of a different sort of animal, contrary to our plan, and this is very very bad.

McSweeney's as a publishing company is built on a business model that only works when we sell physical books. So we try to put a lot of effort into the design and production of the book-as-object.

I'm an amateur science enthusiast. I'm not even a professional enthusiast. I don't know anything; I never even passed biology in high school. But I read the science section of the newspaper.

I think newspapers shouldn't try to compete directly with the Web, and should do what they can do better, which may be long-form journalism and using photos and art, and making connections with large-form graphics and really enhancing the tactile experience of paper.

I worked at Salon.com way back when they started, and there's just unmeasurable value to distributing words online, too, but I still get my news from the newspaper in the morning.

The weird thing is that working within an established story was actually kind of liberating. You know the beginning and middle and end, more or less, so there's less pressure to figure all that out.

If you want to write about people, you can make it up. But if you spend time talking to someone and examining what it is you want to write about, you discover a level of detail that you wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

I am a freak in secondhand velour, a leper who uses L'Oreal Anti-sticky Mega Gel. I am rootless, ripped from all foundations, an orphan raising an orphan and wanting to take away everything there is and replace it with stuff I've made.

One might think that a boy who was out in the snow for so long would get cold, but Max was not. He was warm, partly because he had on many layers, and partly because boys who are part wolf and part wind do not get cold.

Then he got more books. He saved all the books.

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.

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.

Live long enough and you'll disappoint everyone. People think you're able to help them and usually you can't. And so it becomes a process of choosing the one or two people you try hardest not to disappoint. The person in my life I am determined not to disappoint is you.

We've become a nation of indoor cats, he'd said. A nation of doubters, worriers, overthinkers. Thank God these weren't the kind of Americans who settled this country. They were a different breed! They crossed the country in wagons with wooden wheels! People croaked along the way, and they barely stopped. Back then, you buried your dead and kept moving.

Maybe he was more than the sum of his broken parts.

Every story we remember is a novel. Novels make things more universal.

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

I'm interested in the human impact of the giant foot of misplaced government. After all, we encounter it every day.

To me, the print business model is so simple, where readers pay a dollar for all the content within, and that supports the enterprise.

I met a lot of great people in Saudi Arabia and I'd like to see them again. And I'd love to spend more time in the desert and in the mountains. I felt really at home there.

High school teachers who want to get reluctant readers turned around need to give the students some say in the reading list. Make it collaborative: The students will feel ownership, and everyone will dig in.

The house is a factory.

I really believe strongly that kids should be spared the runoff of their parents' lives and problems.

I publish my own books, so there isn't a certain editor I owe the book to at a publishing house.