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There's Nothing To Be Gained From Passive Observance, The Simple Documenting Of Conditions, Because, At Its Core, It Sets A Bad Example. Every Time Something Is Observed And Not Fixed, Or When One Has A Chance To Give In Some Way And Does Not, There Is A Lie Being Told, The Same Lie We All Know By Heart But Which Needn't Be Reiterated.

-Dave Eggers

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There's Nothing To Be

Dave Eggers

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There's Nothing To Be Gained From Passive Observance, The Simple Documenting Of Conditions, Because, At Its Core, It Sets A Bad Example. Every Time Something Is Observed And Not Fixed, Or When One Has A Chance To Give In Some Way And Does Not, There Is A Lie Being Told, The Same Lie We All Know By Heart But Which Needn't Be Reiterated.

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I Had Grown Up As A Fan Of Studs Terkel. In Chicago He Sort Of Looms Large And Is Mentioned Often.

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If You Don't Want Anyone To Know About Your Existence, You Might As Well Kill Yourself. You're Taking Up Space, Air.

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.

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.

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.

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You're Breaking Out Of Character, Again.

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To Me, The Print Business Model Is So Simple, Where Readers Pay A Dollar For All The Content Within, And That Supports The Enterprise.

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Control Someone

Morning Comes Like A Scream Through A Pinhole.

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I Need Eight Hours To Get Maybe 20 Minutes Of Work Done. I Had One Of Those Yesterday: Seven Hours Of Self-loathing.

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Every Time My Brain Parks The Car Neatly In The Driveway, My Mouth Drives Through The Back Of The Garage.

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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.

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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.

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

Most People Would Trade Everything They Know, Everyone They Know- They'd Trade It All To Know They've Been Seen, And Acknowledged, That They Might Even Be Remembered. We All Know We Die. We All Know The World Is Too Big For Us To Be Significant. So All We Have Is The Hope Of Being Seen, Or Heard, Even For A Moment.

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

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Why Do We Pursue Information That We Know Will Never Leave Our Heads?

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I Still Get My News From The Newspaper In The Morning. I Just Have An Affection For Paper, And That's No Secret, I Guess.

We Have Advantages. We Have A Cushion To Fall Back On. This Is Abundance. A Luxury Of Place And Time. Something Rare And Wonderful. It's Almost Historically Unprecedented. We Must Do Extraordinary Things. We Have To. It Would Be Absurd Not To.

When I Was On The Bestseller List With The First Book, Everyone Who Knows Me Knows That Every Week It Continued To Be On The List Was A Very Dark Week For Me. Everyone Knows That All I Wanted Was To Be Off That List.

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

I've Never Had Wifi At Home. I'm Too Easily Distracted, And Youtube Is Too Tempting.

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I'm Interested In The Human Impact Of The Giant Foot Of Misplaced Government. After All, We Encounter It Every Day.

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When We Don't Get The Results We Want In Our Military Endeavors, We Don't Blame The Soldiers.

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.

But Saudi Arabia Is Surprising In A Lot Of Ways. Like Any Place, Or Any People, It Relentlessly Defies Easy Categorization.

Better To Be At The Bottom Of A Ladder You Want To Climb Than In The Middle Of Some Ladder You Don’t, Right?

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And We Will Be Ready, At The End Of Every Day Will Be Ready, Will Not Say No To Anything, Will Try To Stay Awake While Everyone Is Sleeping, Will Not Sleep, Will Make The Shoes With The Elves, Will Breathe Deeply All The Time, Breathe In All The Air Full Of Glass And Nails And Blood, Will Breathe It And Drink It, So Rich, So When It Comes We Will Not Be Angry, Will Be Content, Tired Enough To Go, Gratefully, Will Shake Hands With Everyone, Bye, Bye, And Then Pack A Bag, Some Snacks, And Go To The Volcano.

We Were Fools And Now We Were Driving To Our Deaths In A Rental Car. Janet Jackson Was Tinkling From The Speakers, Asking What We Had Done For Her As Of Late

I Think I'm Far Too Hopeful And Trusting. That's Something I Got From My Mum.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Utopia: We've Turned Into This Surveillance Society And Become A Race Of Spies, Where We Track Our Kids And We Track Our Spouses And We Track Our Friends. I Think Very Soon There Will Be An Obsolescence Of Trust, Because It's Much Easier To Access A Person's Location Than It Is To Ask - Or To Trust.

3. There Are Bears And There Are Small Dogs. Be Strong Like Bear! If They Take Out Your Teeth, Sit On The Dogs. Bears Always Forget They Can Just Sit On The Dogs. Sit On The Dogs.

Why Did We Do That To Pluto? We Had It Good With Pluto.

His Lies Were So Exquisite I Almost Wept.

We Are Unusual And Tragic And Alive.

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I Don't Mean To Beat A Made-in-america Drum, But I Would Be Lying If I Said It Doesn't Feel Somehow Right To Be Printing Books In The U.s.

Yes, A Dark Time Passed Over This Land, But Now There Is Something Like Light.

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He Wanted To Fly In Lightweight Contraptions With Her.

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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.

I See Colors Like You Hear Jet Planes.

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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.

We See The Beauty Within And Cannot Say No.

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.

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

Publishing House

We Are All Feeding From Each Other, All The Time, Every Day.

Every Story We Remember Is A Novel. Novels Make Things More Universal.

Why Do You Want To Be On The Real World? Because I Want Everyone To Witness My Youth. Why? Isn't It Gorgeous?

I Worked At Magazines For Over 10 Years Before I Even Thought Of Writing A Book.

God: I Own You Like I Own The Caves. The Ocean: Not A Chance. No Comparison. God: I Made You. I Could Tame You. The Ocean: At One Time, Maybe. But Not Now. God: I Will Come To You, Freeze You, Break You. The Ocean: I Will Spread Myself Like Wings. I Am A Billion Tiny Feathers. You Have No Idea What's Happened To Me.

Paper Is A Uniquely Beautiful Format, More So Than The Web, I Think: You Need To Invest In The Aesthetics.

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.

If Your Hand Doesn't Work For It, Your Heart Doesn't Feel Sorry For It.

There Is Travel And There Are Babies; Everything Else Is Drudgery And Death.

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

The Only Thing That Everyone Needs To Look Out For Is Keeping The Students Reading Through High School And Thereafter.

You Might Not Be Able To Operate Your Own Learjet And Have An Unlimited Expense Account, But If You Have A Reasonable Expectation For A Print-based Product, Whether It's A Newspaper Or A Magazine, You Can Certainly Exist.

Every Time A Crime Was Committed By A Muslim, That Person's Faith Was Mentioned, Regardless Of Its Relevance. When A Crime Is Committed By A Christian, Do They Mention His Religion? ... When A Crime Is Committed By A Black Man, It's Mentioned In The First Breath: 'an African American Man Was Arrested Today...' But What About German Americans? Anglo Americans? A White Man Robs A Convenience Store And Do We Hear He's Of Scottish Descent? In No Other Instance Is The Ancestry Mentioned.

I Had The Sensation That I Might Always Be Running Like This, That I Would Always Have To Run, And That I Would Always Be Able To Run.

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.

For Years I Feared The Opening Of Every Elevator, Half-convinced That From The Opened Doors Would Come A Bullet, For Me, Shot By A Man In A Tan Trenchcoat. I Have No Idea Why I Feared This, Expected It To Happen. I Even Knew How I Would React To This Bullet Coming From The Elevator Door, What Word I Would Say. That Word Was: Finally.

We Lose Weeks Like Buttons, Like Pencils.

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.

My Voice And Movements Are Restricted By The Things I Own.

Some Of These Kids Just Don't Plain Know How Good They Are: How Smart And How Much They Have To Say. You Can Tell Them. You Can Shine That Light On Them, One Human Interaction At A Time.

Do Not Be Critics, You People, I Beg You. I Was A Critic And I Wish I Could Take It All Back Because It Came From A Smelly And Ignorant Place In Me, And Spoke With A Voice That Was All Rage And Envy. Do Not Dismiss A Book Until You Have Written One, And Do Not Dismiss A Movie Until You Have Made One, And Do Not Dismiss A Person Until You Have Met Them. It Is A F@*$%load Of Work To Be Open-minded And Generous And Understanding And Forgiving And Accepting, But Christ, That Is What Matters. What Matters Is Saying Yes.

There Are Many Saudi Women Doctors, And There Are Many Wealthy And Powerful And Well-educated Saudi Women Who Circumvent The Restrictions Put Upon Them, Quietly Or Otherwise.

We Feel That To Reveal Embarrassing Or Private Things, We Have Given Someone Something, That, Like A Primitive Person Fearing That A Photographer Will Steal His Soul, We Identify Our Secrets, Our Past And Their Blotches, With Our Identity, That Revealing Our Habits Or Losses Or Deeds Somehow Makes One Less Of Oneself.

I Am A Bike Enthusiast; There's A Certain Amount Of Romance To Bikes. They're Both Beautiful And Utilitarian.

She Pulls Away, Pats Me On The Shoulder With Three Mini-pats, Like Those Used To Pet Reptiles.

It's So Easy To Print In The Midwest. You're Saving Months In Shipping And Customs, So We Have Started Printing A Number Of Books There.

I Have No Idea How People Function Without Near-constant Internal Chaos. I'd Lose My Mind.

And What We Were Trying To Offer Every Day Was One-on-one Attention. The Goal Was To Have A One-to-one Ratio With Every One Of These Students.

I'm Better Than You Think. I'm Even Better Than I Think I Am.

Better Than You

Every Part Of My Body Felt Electric. My Chest Ached And My Head Throbbed With The Great Terrible Limitless Possibility Of The Morning, And When It Came, The Sky Was Washed White, Everything Was New, And I Hadn't Slept At All.

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