Quote

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.

Dave Eggers

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Dave Eggers
Age: 54
Born: 1970
Born: March 12
Activist Shareholder
Editor
Journalist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Lucy Thompson
Giving
Cups
Men
Afford
Paper
Walking
Briskly
Break
Tossing
Doe
Begging
Give
Quarter
Anything
Quarters

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Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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All I ever wanted was to know what to do.
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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.
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Once a year, she remembers that she is insignificant. Then she forgets agains, because more than she is insignificant, she is forgetful.
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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.
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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
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But Saudi Arabia is surprising in a lot of ways. Like any place, or any people, it relentlessly defies easy categorization.
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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.
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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?
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I am a bike enthusiast there's a certain amount of romance to bikes. They're both beautiful and utilitarian.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.
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Still though, I think if you're not self-obsessed, you're probably boring.
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