Dave Eggers Quotes

Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.

Dreadful sorry mistress. Ma always said I was too silly to die

If death is in the room, it's pretty interesting. But I would also say that I'm interested in getting myself to believe that it's going to happen to me. I'm interested in it, because if you're not, you're nuts. It's really de facto what we're here to find out about.

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

Facing my own death brought an instant sense of clarity and purpose.

However, the thought hit me that this was a pretty pathetic way to kick the bucket - being accidentally poisoned during a photo shoot, of all things - and I started weeping at the idiocy of it all.

Losing faith in your own singularity is the start of wisdom, I suppose; also the first announcement of death.

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.

For me, the first fact of human existence is the human body. But if you embrace the reality of the human body, you embrace mortality, and that is a very difficult thing for anything to do because the self-conscious mind cannot imagine non-existence. It's impossible to do.

Two of my grandparents died in a car crash. Sucks, 'cause they would have lived to a hundred.

It's terrible to realize you don't learn how to live until you're ready to die, and then it's too late.

Rock bottom for some people is death. Some people never learn from their mistakes. They don't learn from other people's mistakes.

Your body must become familiar with its death - in all its possible forms and degrees - as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life.

I always wondered what hearing one's own obituary might sound like, and I sort of feel like I may have just heard part of it at least.

My mind never left 20, because once it does, that's when you start to die.

I wish I could have known earlier that you have all the time you'll need right up to the day you die.

Even when you're 22 and you feel immortal, you know in your heart you're not.

Our life is our life. If we waste it, we're fools.

I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?

All our yesterdays, it is true, have only lighted fools the way to dusty death. But we need at least the dates of the yesterdays and the list of the fools.

Last words are for those fools who believe they have not yet said enough.

Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.

Truly, life is wasted on the living, Nobody Owens. For one of us is too foolish to live, and it is not I.

Be honest: Are you surprised that I didn't realize sooner? Are you surprised that it took me so long to even /think/ the word -- death? Dying? Dead? Do you think I was being stupid? Naive? Try not to judge. Remember that we're the same, you and me. I thought I would live forever too.