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"You don't know what it's like to be a man over thirty who's never had anything happen to him. You spend so many years trying to stay safe, stay alive, to avoid some unknown horror. Then you realize the horror is existence itself. The nothing-happening."
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"The important thing is not to survive, but to live."

"I simply can't look into the heavens on a crisp starry night and somehow bring myself to believe that the gaping expanse that engulfs the whole of me is the product of chance happenstance. And neither can I believe that the gaping expanse that rests within me is anything less."

"Most of us cling to life as if our existence were a result of our deed or choice."

"On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it, so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment."
Explore more quotes by Dave Eggers

"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."

"Yousef had been lighthearted during his questions, but there was something very serious and sad under his smile, and Alan knew what it was. It was the knowledge that there would be no fighting, and there would be no struggle, no stand taken, and that the two of them, because they were not lacking materially, because despite injustices in their countries they were the recipients of preposterous bounty, would likely do nothing. They were content, they had won. The fighting would be done by others, elsewhere."

"He handed Mae a piece of paper, on which he'd written, in crude all capitals, a list of assertions under the headline 'The Rights of Humans in a Digital Age.' Mae scanned it, catching passages: 'We must all have the right to anonymity.' 'Not every human activity can be measured.' 'The ceaseless pursuit of data to quantify the value of any endeavour is catastrophic to true understanding.' 'The barrier between public and private must remain unbreachable.' At the end she found one line, written in red ink: 'We must all have the right to disappear."

"If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air."

"I was born into a town and a family and the town ad my family happened to me. I own none of it. It is everyone's. It is shareware. I like it, I like having been a part of it, I would kill or die to protect those who are part of it, but I don not claim exclusivity. Have it Take it from me. Do with is what you will. Make it useful. This is like making electricity from dirt; it is almost too good to be believed, that we can make beauty from this stuff."

"This was a new skill she'd acquired, the ability to look, to the outside world, utterly serene and even cheerful, while, in her skull, all was chaos."

"Who were these people, all of them young couples, a few fabulous ones, tall thin-haired blondes with toned men in perfectly pressed jeans -- neither fearing the loss of the other."

"Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let's not forget this."
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