Quotes from What Is the What

“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.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“His lies were so exquisite I almost wept.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“Whatever I do, however I find a way to live, I will tell these stories. I have spoken to every person I have encountered these last difficult days...I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive and so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don't want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“When there is pleasure, there is often abandon, and mistakes are made.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“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.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“I cannot count the times I have cursed our lack of urgency. If I ever love again, 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.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“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.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“If I ever fall in love again, 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.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“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.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“My plans are a jumble for now, but I do know certain things that I will and will not do. [...] I will reach upward. I will attempt to do better. I will not be a burden upon those who have helped me too much already. I will always be grateful for what pleasure I have enjoyed, what joys I have yet to experience. I will take opportunities as they come, but at the same time, I will not trust so easily. I will look at who is at the door before opening it. I will try to be fierce. I will argue when necessary. I will be willing to fight. I will not smile reflexively at every person I see. I will live as a good child of God, and will forgive him each time he claims another of the people I love. I will forgive and attempt to understand his plans for me, and I will not pity myself.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“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.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“I lost someone very close to me and afterward I believed I could have saved him had I been a better friend to him. But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“I will tell these stories...because to do anything else would be something less than human. I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don't want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“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.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“Hello Frances, I have just been to health class, and I was wondering how your feminine parts were developing.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“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.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“I have had friends who I decided were not good friends, were people who brought more trouble than happiness, and thus I have found ways to create more distance between us. Now I have the same thoughts about God, my faith, that I had for these friends. God is in my life but I do not depend on him. My God is not a reliable God.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“But we're no longer rain, I said, we're no longer seeds. We're men. Now we can stand and decide. This is our first chance to choose our own unknown. I'm so proud of everything we've done, my brothers, and if we're fortunate enough to fly and land again in a new place, we must continue. As impossible as it sounds, we must keep walking. And yes, there has been suffering, but now there will be grace. There has been pain, but now there will be serenity. No one has been tried the way we have been tried, and now this is our reward.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“I often cannot believe the things I do.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“The issue is complex, but like many matters in Sudan, it is not as complex as Khartoum would want the west to believe.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“But without William K, I would have forgotten that I had not been born on this journey. That I had lived before this.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“But while Sasha told us that in America even the most successful men can have but one wife at once--my father had six--and talked about escalators, indoor plumbing, and the various laws of the land, he did not warn us that I would be told by American teenagers that I should go back to Africa. ”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“It was always difficult to get cattle returned once a marriage was dissolved.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“The truth is that I do not like hanging in there. I was born, I believe, to do more. Or perhaps it's that I survived to do more. Dorsetta is married, a mother of three, and manages a restaurant; she does more than hang in there. I have a low opinion of this expression, "Hang in there.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“This morning there s first a predictable story about Darfur; an expert on African affairs notes that seven thousand African Union troops patrolling a region the size of France have been ineffectual in preventing continued janjaweed terror. Funding for the troops is about to run out, and it seems that no one, including the United States, is ready to put forth more money or come up with new ideas to stop the killing and displacement. This is not surprising to those of us who lived through twenty years of oppression by the hands of Khartoum and its militias.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“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. If I ever love again, I will not wait to love as I can. It is no way to live, to wait to love.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“If a boy became sick he walked alone; the others were afraid to catch what he had, and did not want to know him too well for he would surely die soon. We did not want his voice in our heads.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

“It seemed the whole world knew this person named Diana, and if the world knew her, the connection between the peoples of the earth was tighter than I had imagined. I wondered if the people of England would mourn if Mike and Grace died. At that time, confused as I was, I imagined that they would.”
― Dave Eggers, quote from What Is the What

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Popular quotes

“He learned to communicate with birds and discovered their conversation was fantastically boring. It was all to do with windspeed, wingspans, power-to-weight ratios and a fair bit about berries.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“Kiera Michelle Allen, my life was empty before you stepped into it. I thought I had everything I needed, but only because I didn’t let myself want anything. And then I saw you, and you burned a hole straight through me. I have never wanted anything more in my life. And I have never been more terrified in all my life. In all my life,” he repeated.

…”And then, beyond some miracle that I’ll never understand, I got to keep you, and now…I’m only just beginning to understand what it means to truly want something. Because I want so much now. I want to make you happy. I want to give you the world. I want you to be proud of me. I want to comfort you. I want you to comfort me. I want to hold you when you’re scared. I want you to hold me when I’m scared. I want to make you laugh. I want to make you blush.” Leaning in, he whispered, “I want to make you scream.”

…”I want to give you a home. I want to fill it with children. I want to take care of you. I want to grow old with you. I want you by my side, every day.” … “I just want you. Do you want me too?”
― S.C. Stephens, quote from Reckless

“We’re gonna be … I mean people like you and me … we’re gonna be fifty-year-old libertines in a world full of twenty-year-old Calvinists.”
― Armistead Maupin, quote from Tales of the City

“I don’t want you to just be my
tutor. I want you to be the girl I look for in the halls every
morning and save a seat for in the cafeteria. I want you to be
the one waiting for me when I walk off the field at my games.
I want you to be the one I pick up the phone to call just to
make me smile.”
― Abbi Glines, quote from Existence

“You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Beyond Good and Evil

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