Quotes by Dave Eggers

I am a bike enthusiast; there's a certain amount of romance to bikes. They're both beautiful and utilitarian.

— Dave Eggers

Love

Through the small tall bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the tree calligraphic.

— Dave Eggers

Wisdom

Because I grew up with this naive expectation of people doing right, I get shocked by every little violation.

— Dave Eggers

Wisdom

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.

— Dave Eggers

Love

It's not that our family has no taste, it's just that our family's taste is inconsistent.

— Dave Eggers

Wisdom

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.

— Dave Eggers

Success

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.

— Dave Eggers

Life

I think I'm far too hopeful and trusting. That's something I got from my mum.

— Dave Eggers

Hope

You can do and use the skills that you have. The schools need you. The teachers need you. Students and parents need you. They need your actual person: your physical personhood and your open minds and open ears and boundless compassion, sitting next to them, listening and nodding and asking questions for hours at a time.

— Dave Eggers

Education

I can remember exactly where I sat when my teacher first read Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach'.

— Dave Eggers

Education

But you know, there's something about the kids finishing their homework in a given day, working one-on-one, getting all this attention - they go home, they're finished. They don't stall, they don't do their homework in front of the TV.

— Dave Eggers

Success

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.

— Dave Eggers

Wisdom

People are strange, but more than that, they're good. They're good first, then strange.

— Dave Eggers

Wisdom

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.

— Dave Eggers

Success

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.

— Dave Eggers

Hope

But Saudi Arabia is surprising in a lot of ways. Like any place, or any people, it relentlessly defies easy categorization.

— Dave Eggers

Wisdom

I publish my own books, so there isn't a certain editor I owe the book to at a publishing house.

— Dave Eggers

Wisdom

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.

— Dave Eggers

Success

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.

— Dave Eggers

Hope

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.

— Dave Eggers

Wisdom

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.

— Dave Eggers

Wisdom

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

Success

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

Wisdom

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.

— Dave Eggers

Wisdom