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Famous Dave Eggers Quotes

“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.”

PeopleIfsWayPersonsSometimesHappensAsksWishLosesAnswersTalkingMiddleMinutesLeavingPhonesSentencesConvincedRingsMy WayOver ItBorrowedBorrowingShort TimeBatteriesRemote ControlCalculatorsLaconicControl Someone
Book:You Shall Know Our Velocity
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“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.”

PersonsBookSometimesIndividualVoicePowerfulNumbersCasesStudyOne ThingExampleNarrativeNonfictionAcademicParagraphAnecdotesClinicalsReally PowerfulCase Studies
Author:Dave Eggers
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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. 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.”

SimplePartyPaySupportHavensSourceReaderModelsThirdsDollarsComplicatedEnterprisePrintProvenRevenueBusiness ModelsAdvertisersThird Parties
Author:Dave Eggers
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“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.”

IfsThinkingLittlesMightWantedValuesFoundBitsVoiceWrittenLittle BitPagesOriginalsPressesLocalsOpennessPoolGreat Value
Author:Dave Eggers
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“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.”

FeelsWellsDoeStillsMatterHardFormGuyForgetFictionCarNo Matter WhatDrivingSuitsHard TimesWorking ItCostumesClownSuits You
Author:Dave Eggers
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“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.”

PeopleHomeKidsParentPerfectSupportCrazyCoupleDivorceBeing TrueBabysitterSure Thing
Author:Dave Eggers
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“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?”

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Book:You Shall Know Our Velocity
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“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.”

PeopleLostLeftWhiteViewsMagicTreeLandLowsRedBlueGoldenBridgesStringsGatesSan FranciscoCrystalsExplosionsRocketsRooftopsBerkeleyOaklandNorth PoleColumbineToothpicksRichmondGetawaysCauliflower
Author:Dave Eggers
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“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.”

ShowsStrongStarsBlackBornImaginationSpaceDarknessSunSubjectsHolesCaptureVoidFoldsGraspingTalk ShowsBlack HoleOdditiesSideshows
Book:A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story
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“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.”

FeelsPersonsSoulPastGivenLossSecretIdentityHabitPhotographerOneselfDeedsStealingPrimitiveOur PastEmbarrassingRevealingPrivate Things
Author:Dave Eggers
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“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.”

PeopleSaidDifferentEndsInspirationSeemsAnimalPlansFailingPureJokesWindowConstantJewContraryEach DayFrustrationRoutineTidesDecayStemSomewhere ElseGrindAvailabilityImplying
Book:A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Picador Classic
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“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.”

ShouldTryingStillsSelfShowsConsciousnessDangerMetaphorCoreNoiseDespiteEchoesFogSelf ConsciousnessPlowing
Book:A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story
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