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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.

-Dave Eggers

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When I Was On

Dave Eggers

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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.

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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.

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.

Hello Frances, I Have Just Been To Health Class, And I Was Wondering How Your Feminine Parts Were Developing.

I Always Had A Hard Time With Fiction. It Does Feel Like Driving A Car In A Clown Suit. You're Going Somewhere, But You're In Costume, And You're Not Really Fooling Anybody. You're The Guy In Costume, And Everybody's Supposed To Forget That And Go Along With You. Obviously, It Can Work, It Works All The Time - Well, It Doesn't Always Work. Still, No Matter What, I'm Always Looking At The Form And Addressing It, Not Ignoring It.

A Combination Of Acting, Lying, Begging, And Cheating.

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.

To Me Any Given Story Has Its Appropriate Form. There Might Be Some Story I Get Involved With That's Begging To Be A Graphic Novel, So That Will Have To Be That Way.

And There Is A Chance That Everything We Did Was Incorrect, But Stasis Is Itself Criminal For Those With The Means To Move, And The Means To Weave Communion Between People.

I'm Never A Fan Of The Sociopathic Kind Of Reviewing, People Who Are Sort Of Self-immolating And Have Social Problems Or Whatever, And Let It Out In Literary-criticism Form. I Just Feel Like Book Reviewing Should Be Respectful And Calm And Not Filled With Bile.

But What I Really Want Is To Just Swim Around In A Warm Baby Pool Of These Friends, Jump In Their Dry Leaf Pile-to Rub Them All Over Myself, Without Words And Clothes.

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.

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.

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.

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

My Mind, I Know, I Can Prove, Hovers On Hummingbird Wings. It Hovers And It Churns. And When It's Operating At Full Thrust, The Churning Does Not Stop. The Machines Do Not Rest, The Systems Rarely Cool. And While I Can Forget Anything Of Any Importance--this Is Why People Tell Me Secrets--my Mind Has An Uncanny Knack For Organization When It Comes To Pain. Nothing Tormenting Is Ever Lost, Never Even Diminished In Color Or Intensity Or Quality Of Sound.

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.

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.

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

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.

I Like The Dark Part Of The Night, After Midnight And Before Four-thirty, When It's Hollow, When Ceilings Are Harder And Farther Away. Then I Can Breathe, And Can Think While Others Are Sleeping, In A Way Can Stop Time, Can Have It So – This Has Always Been My Dream – So That While Everyone Else Is Frozen, I Can Work Busily About Them, Doing Whatever It Is That Needs To Be Done, Like The Elves Who Make The Shoes While Children Sleep.

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.

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

I'll Always Be Working On Five Things At Once, Usually With Those Documents Open At The Same Time Because If I Get Stuck Somewhere I'll Jump Over To Something Else. That's How My Head Has Always Worked.

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.

The House Is A Factory.

I Went To Saudi Arabia In 2010, And Spent Most Of My Time In Jeddah And The King Abdullah Economic City.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

His Lies Were So Exquisite I Almost Wept.

The Only Infallible Truth Of Our Lives Is That Everything We Love In Life Will Be Taken From Us.

We Must Do Extraordinary Things. We Have To. It Would Be Absurd Not To.

Extraordinary Things

I Often Cannot Believe The Things I Do.

It Is No Way To Live, To Wait To Love.

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.

Then He Got More Books. He Saved All The Books.

Recently, I've Discovered Radiohead And Find Them To Be Quite Good. So Clearly, I'm Some Kind Of Musical Retard. (jonathan Ames, Middle-american Gothic)

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.

When You're In Your Twenties In A New City Where No One's From Here, We're All Sort Of Orphans. The Only People That You Can Count On Our Bunch Of People That You Work With And That You Know. You're Only As Good As The Reliability Of That Latticework.

Books Have A Unique Way Of Stopping Time In A Particular Moment And Saying: Let’s Not Forget This.

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.

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.

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.

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

She Needs A New Journal. The One She Has Is Problematic. To Get To The Present, She Needs To Page Through The Past, And When She Does, She Remembers Things, And Her New Journal Entries Become, For The Most Part, Reactions To The Days She Regrets, Wants To Correct, Rewrite.

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

Up There We See Everything, Oakland To The Left, El Cerrito And Richmond To The Right, Marin Forward, Over The Bay, Berkeley Below, All Red Rooftops And Trees Of Cauliflower And Columbine, Shaped Like Rockets And Explosions, All Those People Below Us, With Humbler Views; We See The Bay Bridge, Clunkety, The Richmond Bridge, Straight, Low, The Golden Gate, Red Toothpicks And String, The Blue Between, The Blue Above, The Gleaming White Land Of The Lost/superman's North Pole Getaway Magic Crystals That Are San Francisco.

Once A Year, She Remembers That She Is Insignificant. Then She Forgets Agains, Because More Than She Is Insignificant, She Is Forgetful.

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.

Humans Are Divided Between Those Who Can Still Look Through The Eyes Of Youth And Those Who Cannot.

We Lose Weeks Like Buttons, Like Pencils.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

We Would Oppose The Turning Of The Planet And Refuse The Setting Of The Sun.

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

Tim O'brien's Book About Vietnam, The Things They Carried, Has Won Every Award, Is Studied In College And Is Considered To Be Definitive. But It's Fiction.

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.

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

Three-dimensional Results Are Important To Me. I Did Once Spend Some Time Just Writing, And Floating Around, And I Lost My Mind A Little Bit. I Wasn't So Good At That.

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.

People Say I Talk Slowly. I Talk In A Way Sometimes Called Laconic. The Phone Rings, I Answer, And People Ask If They've Woken Me Up. I Lose My Way In The Middle Of Sentences, Leaving People Hanging For Minutes. I Have No Control Over It. I'll Be Talking, And Will Be Interested In What I'm Saying, But Then Someone-i'm Convinced This What Happens-someone-and I Wish I Knew Who, Because I Would Have Words For This Person-for A Short Time, Borrows My Head. Like A Battery Is Borrowed From A Calculator To Power A Remote Control, Someone, Always, Is Borrowing My Head.

Control Someone

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

How Many Times In Life Can We Make Decisions That Are Important But Will Not Hurt Anyone? Are We Obligated- Maybe We Are- To Say Yes To Any Choice When No One Will Be Hurt? We Use The Word Hurt When Talking About Things Like This Because When These Things Go Wrong It Can Feel As If You Were Hit In The Sternum By A Huge Animal That's Run For Miles Just To Strike You.

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

You Know, It's Been Proven That 35 To 40 Hours A Year With One-on-one Attention, A Student Can Get One Grade Level Higher

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

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

It All Meant Something. Until It Didn't.

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

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

We're In An Era Where They've Sanitized Home Life In Movies To Such A Degree That There Is A Certain Home Life That Might Be True If You Have Two Perfect Parents, And A Nanny, And A Couple Babysitters, And Support, And Lots Of Money, And There's No Strain At Home, Or Whatever. But For Most People, There's Strain, You Know? There's A Lot Of Pressure, Things Can't Be Perfect, Parents Can't Be Perfect All The Time. There's A Divorce, There's Money Issues, Whatever. People Work, So You Don't Always Have These Vast Reserves Of Patience Every Time Your Kid Goes Crazy.

He Wanted To Fly In Lightweight Contraptions With Her.

But Everyone Disappears, No Matter Who Loves Them.

It Was Just An Idea I Had, That It Could Be Cool To Have A Book Covered In Fake Fur.

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

She Felt Some Measure Of Relief Knowing That In The Very Least, On The Open Road She Would Have Some Time To Think.

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.

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

Publishing House

But I'm Thinking About 12 Things At Once, A Hundred Thousand Times A Day. Most People Do, I Would Imagine.

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.

My Head Was A Condemned Church With A Ceiling Of Bats, But I Swung From This Dark Mood To Euphoria When I Thought About Leaving.

My Parents Told Me They Were Going To Kill Me At Least A Thousand Times Growing Up. "i'm Gonna Kill You," And Then They'd Whack Me On The Side Of The Head Or Whatever. And "what's Wrong With You?" And "i'm Gonna Lock You Up," And "i'm Gonna Throw You Out The Window," And "i'm Gonna Kill You." You Know, All These Things That You Say In The Heat Of A Normal Chaotic Household.

When You Adapt A Book, You Really Have To Cut It To The Essence.

I Was Feeling Everything Too Much. Everything Pulled At My Eyes. I Spent Hours Floating In Pools.

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.

You Invite Things To Happen. You Open The Door. You Inhale. And If You Inhale The Chaos, You Give The Chaos, The Chaos Gives Back.

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

It Was Always Difficult To Get Cattle Returned Once A Marriage Was Dissolved.

I Love To Be Surprised Or Challenged Or Told That I Know Less Than I Thought That I Knew. I Know It's An Old Saw, But The Older I Get The Less I Know I Know.

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

If You Think I'm Annoying And Preachy Now, You Should Have Known Me In Grade School.

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.

He Remained, Weeks After Awakening, In That Period Of Early-morning Consciousness That Allows Easy Re-entry To Dreaming. His Limbs Still Tingled With The Residue Of Sleep, And Most Days He Wanted Badly To Allow It To Overtake Him Again.

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.

You're Breaking Out Of Character, Again.

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.

And That's Actually The Brunt Of What We Do Is, People Going Straight From Their Workplace, Straight From Home, Straight Into The Classroom And Working Directly With The Students. So Then We're Able To Work With Thousands And Thousands More Students.

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.

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

But There Was Something Psychological Happening There That Was Just A Little Bit Different. And The Other Thing Was, There Was No Stigma. Kids Weren't Going Into The 'center-for-kids-that-need-more-help' Or Something Like That. It Was 826 Valencia.

I Grew Up North Of Chicago, Not Far From Where The Schwinn Bicycle Plant Used To Be, And Was Conscious Of The Fact That These Beautiful, Everlasting Bikes Were Made Just Down The Road.

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.

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.

Now I'm In Nonfiction. To Me Any Given Story Has Its Appropriate Form. There Might Be Some Story I Get Involved With That's Begging To Be A Graphic Novel, So That Will Have To Be That Way. There's Always That Matching Of The Content And The Form, And That Means Everything To Me. I Spend Years Thinking About What That Match Is Going To Be Before I Can Really Make It Work.

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.

Here I Am Rock You Like A Hurricane.

In All My Life I'd Never Been Approached This Way, The Car Pulling Up, The Where You Going? It Was Something I Wish Had Happened Hundreds Of Times. 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 Forwards, And Every Time I Felt Stupid. Why Should People Look At You? Why Should They Care?

The Idea Of 'voice Of Witness' Is To Let Survivors And Witnesses Of Human-rights Abuses Tell Their Story At Length. It Started With A Course That I Co-taught At U.c. Berkeley Journalism School Back In 2003.

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

Better Than You

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.

Every Time I Get Through The Work On A Book Of Nonfiction, I Say I'll Never Do It Again; It Takes So Much Out Of You.

But That's One Lifetime." Yeah." But While Doing That One I'd Want To Be Able To Have Done Other Stuff. Whole Other Lives- The One Where I Sail-" I Know, On A Boat You Made Yourself.

Nonfiction Narratives Are Really Powerful And Valid In Themselves. But One Thing That You Don't Get Sometimes From The More Clinical Or Academic Books Or Nonfiction Books Is That You Don't Get To Hear The Person's Voice; You Don't Get Them As Individuals. You Get A Few Quotes And You Hear Them As Sort Of A Case Study: Numbers, Examples, Anecdotes, Maybe A Paragraph Here, And That's About It.

Through The Small Tall Bathroom Window The December Yard Is Gray And Scratchy, The Tree Calligraphic.

This Boy Thinks I Am Not Of His Species, That I Am Some Other Kind Of Creature, One That Can Be Crushed Under The Weight Of A Phone Book. The Pain Is Not Great, But The Symbolism Is Disagreeable.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Think Almost Every Writer In The World Would Hope That Books Would Be Always Talked About With Respect And Civility And Depth And Seriousness.

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.

We've Lost That Very Simple Transaction That's So Pure, Where A Reader Can Say, "i Support What You're Doing, Here's My Dollar. I Know That You Guys Are Gonna Be Watchdogs Or Keep The Government Accountable, So Here's My 50-cent Contribution Each Day." It's Just So Tidy, And I Think So Inspiring.

Again The Greatest Use Of A Human Was To Be Useful. Not To Consume, Not To Watch, But To Do Something For Someone Else That Improved Their Life, Even For A Few Minutes.

I Can Remember Exactly Where I Sat When My Teacher First Read Roald Dahl's 'james And The Giant Peach'.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

They Were So In Love With The World, And So Disappointed In Every Aspect Of It.

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

Dignity Is An Affectation, Cute But Eccentric, Like Learning French Or Collecting Scarves.

He Must Trust, And He Must Have Faith. And So He Builds, Because What Is Building, And Rebuilding And Rebuilding Again, But An Act Of Faith?

How Had This Happened? Everyone In The World Knew More Than Us, About Everything, And This I Hated Then Found Hugely Comforting.

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

The Raising Of A Child Is The Building Of A Cathedral. You Can't Cut Corners.

Be Strong, Be Brave, Be True. Endure.

I Hung Up The Phone, Jubilant, And Threw Myself Into A Wall, Then Pretended To Be Getting Electrocuted. I Do This When I'm Very Happy.

We Are Unusual And Tragic And Alive.

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.

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.

The Air Is Like Being Wanted, We Say, And They Nod Approvingly. The Air Is Like Getting Older, They Say, And They Touch Our Arms Gently.

I Think There's Great Value To The Associated Press And To Reuters, But If You Wanted To Generate Original Content, Maybe Written By Local Writers, It Just Takes A Little Bit Of Openness To Open Your Pages Up To A Wider Freelance Writer Pool, And Then You Might Find New Voices And A Wider Array Of Voices, And Definitely More Original Content That Can't Be Found Anywhere Else.

It's Not That Our Family Has No Taste, It's Just That Our Family's Taste Is Inconsistent.

We See The Beauty Within And Cannot Say No.

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.

When We Pass By Another Person Without Telling Them We Love Them It’s Cruel And Wrong And We All Know This.

Well, My Background Is Journalism. I Don't Have Any Creative-writing Experience Except For One Class I Took As A Sophomore In College.

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

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

When There Is Pleasure, There Is Often Abandon, And Mistakes Are Made.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Morning Comes Like A Scream Through A Pinhole.

I Really Believe Strongly That Kids Should Be Spared The Runoff Of Their Parents' Lives And Problems.

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.

He Was Feeling Buoyant, Flexible. He Wanted To Go Jogging. He Stood. He Couldn't Go Jogging. He Called Room Service And Ordered A Basket Of Breads And Pastries.

I See Colors Like You Hear Jet Planes.

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.

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

I've Purposely Stayed Away From Reading Much About Postmodern Theory, And Most Everything I Have Read Just Bored Me To Tears. I Don't Think Anybody's Written About It, Or Very Few Have, With Any Verve.

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

Write Your Goddamned Book Now. The World Awaits.

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.

I've Always Been Interested In The Form Itself, So I Always Feel Like I've Never Been Good At Going Ahead With The Artifice And Not Acknowledging The Self In The Artistic Process, And Not Acknowledging The Absurdity Of Pretending That's Required In Fiction.

To Me, The Print Business Model Is So Simple, Where Readers Pay A Dollar For All The Content Within, And That Supports The Enterprise. The Web Model Is Just So Much More Complicated, And Involves This Third Party Of Advertisers, And All These Other Sources Of Revenue That Are Sort Of Provisional, But Haven't Been Proven Yet.

You Can't Ever Guess At Life, At Pain. All Pain Is Real, And All Pain Is Personal. It's The Most Personal Thing We Have. It Eats Each Of Us Differently.

Personal Things

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

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.

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

Loneliness Is Just A Thing That I'm Not Personally Interested In. So Far, It Hasn't Been On My Docket Of Things To Write About.

It Was Called The Middle Ages, The Dark Ages. If Not For The Monks, Everything The World Had Ever Learned Would Have Been Lost. Well, We Live In A Similar Time, When We're Losing The Vast Majority Of What We Do And See And Learn. But It Doesn't Have To Be That Way.

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

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.

We Have No Choice. We Need The Communion Of Souls And Only Here Are They Awake.

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.

No One’s Forcing You To Do This. You Willingly Tie Yourself To These Leashes. And You Willingly Become Utterly Socially Autistic. You No Longer Pick Up On Basic Human Communication Clues. You’re At A Table With Three Humans, All Of Whom Are Looking At You And Trying To Talk To You, And You’re Staring At A Screen, Searching For Strangers In Dubai.

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.

I Always Like The Idea Of Doing Interviews With Somebody But Completely Seriously Not Ever Mentioning What That Person Is Generally Known For.

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.

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.

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.

Love Is Implicit In Every Connection. It Should Be. Thus When Absent It Makes Us Insane. (you Shall Know Our Velocity)

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

All I Ever Wanted Was To Know What To Do.

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