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The Key Thing Is, Even If You Only Have A Couple Of Hours A Month, Those Two Hours Shoulder-to-shoulder, Next To One Student, Concentrated Attention, Shining This Beam Of Light On Their Work, On Their Thoughts And Their Self-expression, Is Going To Be Absolutely Transformative, Because So Many Of The Students Have Not Had That Ever Before.

-Dave Eggers

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The Key Thing Is,

Dave Eggers

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The Key Thing Is, Even If You Only Have A Couple Of Hours A Month, Those Two Hours Shoulder-to-shoulder, Next To One Student, Concentrated Attention, Shining This Beam Of Light On Their Work, On Their Thoughts And Their Self-expression, Is Going To Be Absolutely Transformative, Because So Many Of The Students Have Not Had That Ever Before.

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He Wanted To Fly In Lightweight Contraptions With Her.

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Having Lost People When They Were Young, You Feel Intimately Acquainted With Mortality, I Guess. Though I Procrastinate Worse Than Anybody.

I Had Forgotten That, And So Many Things. How Could I Put Everything Down On Paper? It Seemed Impossible. No Matter What, The Majority Of Life Would Be Left Out Of This Story, This Sliver Of A Version Of The Life I'd Known. But I Tried Anyway.

Also, I Need Deadlines, Just Like Everybody Else, Especially Coming From Magazines, Newspapers, And Stuff Like That. I Need Daily Or Weekly Deadlines To Get Stuff Done, Or I Continue To Do Things And Not Go Off On A Year Of Unproductivity.

I Went To Public School All My Life And All Through College And I Liked It.

Why Shouldn’t Your Curiosity About The World Be Rewarded?

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.

Maybe He Was More Than The Sum Of His Broken Parts.

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

I Think There's A Future Where The Web And Print Coexist And They Each Do Things Uniquely And Complement Each Other, And We Have What Could Be The Ultimate And Best-yet Array Of Journalistic Venues.

The Key Thing Is, Even If You Only Have A Couple Of Hours A Month, Those Two Hours Shoulder-to-shoulder, Next To One Student, Concentrated Attention, Shining This Beam Of Light On Their Work, On Their Thoughts And Their Self-expression, Is Going To Be Absolutely Transformative, Because So Many Of The Students Have Not Had That Ever Before.

Writing Is A Deep-sea Dive. You Need Hours Just To Get Into It: Down, Down, Down. If You're Called Back To The Surface Every Couple Of Minutes By An Email, You Can't Ever Get Back Down. I Have A Great Friend Who Became A Twitterer And He Says He Hasn't Written Anything For A Year.

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.

I Publish My Own Books, So There Isn't A Certain Editor I Owe The Book To At A Publishing House.

Publishing House

Good Artists Exist In What They Make, And Consequently Are Perfectly Uninteresting In What They Are.

But While Mum And Dad Were Incredibly Caring, It Was Also A Very Chaotic Household Where Everyone Fought About Everything. So I Know What It's Like To Internalize All That Chaos.

You Treat A Kid With Respect And As An Adult You Talk To Them As If They're Smart People. But You Don't Throw At Them The Trappings Of Adulthood And You Know, The Darker Stuff.

You Know How You Finish A Bag Of Chips And You Hate Yourself? You Know You’ve Done Nothing Good For Yourself. That’s The Same Feeling, And You Know It Is, After Some Digital Binge. You Feel Wasted And Hollow And Diminished.

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.

When Anybody Starts Out With A Memoir, You Get The Impulse To Tell Your Own Story With Your Own Voice, And You Get All That Out In One Fell Swoop Sometimes.

So This Is The Space During Tutoring Hours. It's Very Busy. Same Principles: One-on-one Attention, Complete Devotion To The Students' Work And A Boundless Optimism And Sort Of A Possibility Of Creativity And Ideas.

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.

In Hospitals I Feel Palpable Comfort. I Feel The Competence, The Expertise, So Much Education And Money, All Of The Supplies Sterile, Everything Packaged, Sealed Tight. My Fears Evaporate When The Automatic Doors Shush Open.

Because I Grew Up With This Naive Expectation Of People Doing Right, I Get Shocked By Every Little Violation.

Maybe He Hadn't Thought The War Through. It Had Seemed Like Simple Fun When He Had First Pictured It, With A Glorious Beginning, A Difficult But Valor-filled Middle, And A Victorious End. He Hadn't Accounted For The Fact That There Might Not Be Much Of A Resolution To The Battle, And He Hadn't Imagined What It Would Feel Like When The War Just Sort Of Ended, Without Anyone Admitting Defeat And Congratulating Him For His Bravery.

People Are Strange, But More Than That, They're Good. They're Good First, Then Strange.

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.

When I'm Doing Work Online Or On The Computer, It's One Thing. When I Want To Read, I Want To Go Elsewhere, And I Want To Be Away From The Screen.

The Pain Is Not Great. But The Symbolism Is Disagreeable.

Still Though, I Think If You're Not Self-obsessed, You're Probably Boring.

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.

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

There Is No Faith Like The Faith Of A Builder Of Homes In Coastal Louisiana

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