Heroes of the Frontier

by Dave Eggers

was certain the world held only cowards, that work meant nothing to anyone, service meant nothing, that pettiness and guile and treachery and greed won always—nothing could defeat the thieving weasels of the world. Eventually they would wear down the brave, the true, anyone who wanted to go about their lives with integrity. The weasels always won because love and goodness was an ice-cream cone and treachery was a tank.

She was the purest sort of materialist: she wanted things, but didn’t care about things.

We gravitate toward comfort, Josie thought, but it must be rationed. Give us one-third comfort and two-thirds chaos—that is balance.

“the lost will always prey on the competent. Just as someone drowning will pull down someone merely treading water.”

The easiest way to witness the stupidity and misplaced hopes of all humanity is to watch, for twenty minutes, a human using a leaf blower. With this machine, the man was saying, I will murder all quiet. I will destroy the aural plane. And I will do so with a machine that performs a task far less efficiently than I could with a rake.

Sorry took too much courage, too much strength and faith and rightness to have a place in this cowardly century.

Courage was the beginning, being unafraid, moving ahead, through small hardships, not turning back. Courage was simply a form of moving forward.