Why do you want to be on The Real World?-Because I want everyone to witness my youth Why?-Isn't it gorgeous?

— Dave Eggers

Why shouldn’t your curiosity about the world be rewarded?

— Dave Eggers

You and I read the same books and hear the same sermons, and we come away with different messages. That has to be evidence of some serious problem, right?

— Dave Eggers

You better [start writing] now because you know how to write, and you have fingers, and you have this one life, and during this one life, you should put your words down, and make your voice heard, and then let others hear your voice. And the only way any of that’s going to happen is if you actually do it. People can’t read the thoughts in your head. They can only read the thoughts you put down, carefully and with great love, on the page. So you have to do it, goddammit.

— Dave Eggers

You don’t know what it’s like to be a man over thirty who’s never had anything happen to him. You spend so many years trying to stay safe, stay alive, to avoid some unknown horror. Then you realize the horror is existence itself. The nothing-happening.

— Dave Eggers

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.

— Dave Eggers

You look at pictures of Nepal, push a smile button, and you think that’s the same as going there.

— Dave Eggers

Your memory has always been given to opportunistic revision.

— Dave Eggers

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.

— Dave Eggers

Yousef had been lighthearted during his questions, but there was something very serious and sad under his smile, and Alan knew what it was. It was the knowledge that there would be no fighting, and there would be no struggle, no stand taken, and that the two of them, because they were not lacking materially, because despite injustices in their countries they were the recipients of preposterous bounty, would likely do nothing. They were content, they had won. The fighting would be done by others, elsewhere.

— Dave Eggers