Dave Eggers Quotes

I learned from my past.

In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.

We all have appointments with the past.

People who keep journals have life twice

The past is one evil less and one memory more.

There are a few things that I regret, but nothing that I need to forget.

But today when I am 17 and warm and well fed, I'm keeping this journal for myself so I can always remember life as we knew it, life as we know it, for a time when I am no longer in the sunroom.

I don't spend much time regretting the past, once I've taken my lesson from it. I don't dwell on it.

I suppose . . . in writing you can't have regrets. I mean, you just get it down the way it was . . . it's only wishful thinking that things could be other than they were.

Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future.

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

It wouldn't be New Year's if I didn't have regrets.

When my mother was sick, I found myself needing to put down in my journals all sorts of things - to try to understand them, and, I think, to try to remember them.

We were younger. And it's basically like looking at football classics. You see things that you did, you see things that you could've done better and you think about all the good relationships that you had with the cast.

When I go back and read my journals or fiction, I am always surprised. I may not remember having those thoughts, but they still exist and I know they are mine, and it's all part of making sense of who I am.

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'

The best years are behind me.

I never imagined my life would be the way that it has been for the past 30 years. I have had the best experiences a person can have-and the worst as well.

I realized I've spent all my life creating a past.

I started to write things down, as a very young child, wanting to find a way to remember - to keep close, somehow - moments that made an impression on me.

I like to read my diary occasionally to remind myself what a miserable, alienated old sod I used to be.

I always write to understand my place in the world. I can see myself and my life unfold on the page, and I can understand my strengths, my weaknesses - I can see where I need to step up a bit.

I just can't believe all the things I did that decade.

I find it hard to focus looking forward. So I look backward.