Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? Quotes

“You see pictures of Buddha and he’s sitting, reclining, at peace. The Hindus have their twelve-armed elephant god, who also seems so content but not powerless. But leave it to Christians to have a dead and bloody man nailed to a cross.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“Existing, period – that is what drives men to irrational acts.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“The death of a young person for no reason is an apocalypse.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“You and I read the same books and hear the same sermons and we come away with different messages. That has to be evidence of some serious problem, right?”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“I don't think I've ever gotten any significant thing I wanted. You have no idea how weird it is to envision things and have them come to nothing. No vision has ever come true, no promise has ever been kept. But then there was you, and you were the promise that would obliterate all the disappointments of the past. Everything about you insisted on it. Your color, your hair, the way light projects from every part of you. You were the sun that would burn away all the putrid broken promises of the world.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“Who says we don’t want to be inspired? We fucking want to be inspired! What the fuck is wrong with us wanting to be inspired? Everyone acts like it’s some crazy idea, some outrageous ungrantable request. Don’t we deserve grand human projects that give us meaning?”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“It's not human. It's not primal. So we don't understand it. It's a more recent mutation. The things we all have, love and hate and passion, and the need to eat and yell and screw, these are things every human has. But there's this new mutation, this ability to stand between a human being and some small measure of justice and blame it on some regulation. To say that the form was filled out incorrectly.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“And the only thing worse than the silencing of a martyr, a real martyr – someone with dangerous ideas – is silencing someone who has nothing at all to say.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“–Don’t you think the vast majority of the chaos in the world is caused by a relatively small group of disappointed men?
–
–
–I don’t know. Could be.
–The men who haven’t gotten the work they expected to get. The men who don’t get the promotion they expected. The men who are dropped in a jungle or a desert and expected video games and got mundanity and depravity and friends dying like animals. These men can’t be left to mix with the rest of society. Something bad always happens.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“If you don’t have something grand for men like us to be part of, we will take apart all the little things. Neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Building by building. Family by family.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“The men who are dropped in a jungle or a desert and expected video games and got mundanity and depravity and friends dying like animals.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“—When I see these massacres at malls or offices, I think, There by the Lake of God go I. —Grace of God. —What’s that? —It’s “There but for the grace of God.” —No. It’s “there by the Lake of God.” —It’s “grace of God.” —It can’t be. —Son. It is. —I’ve always had this picture in my mind of the Lake of God. And you walk by it. —There’s no Lake of God. —It was like this huge underground lake, and it was dark and cool and peaceful and you could go there and float there and be forgiven. —”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“Young men, come and blow things up.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“The money that could have saved the Shuttle, and the money we send to random countries, that we use to remake unchangeable countries ten thousand miles away.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“Young men need to be kept away from guns, bombs, women, cars, hard alcohol and heavy machinery.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“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.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“—Just assume I can threaten you and it's better if you answer my questions. Why do you think my head's on one turn too tight? What does that mean?
—It means that they put a capable brain in your skull, and then when they put the cap on, they turned it one turn too tight. It makes for bad outcomes. I think of graduate students stuffing their colleagues into crevices, shooting professors, that kind of thing. People like you. Smart but nuts. One turn too tight.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“You've got a head full of rocks, kid. And there are a hundred thousand others like you in the desert right now, and it's no wonder they're killing civilians and raping women soldiers and shooting themselves in the leg. I don't mean to besmirch the character of these young men and women, because I know most of them are the salt of the earth, but my point is that they should be kept safe and kept out of the way of dangerous things. Young men need to be kept away from guns, bombs, women, cars, hard alcohol and heavy machinery. If I had my way they'd be cryogenically frozen until such a time as we knew they could get themselves across a street without fucking it up. Most of the men I served with were nineteen. I'm fairly certain that when you were nineteen you couldn't parallel park.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“—There are millions more like me, too. Everyone I know is like me.

—I thought you were twenty-five. God help us.

—Like I said the other day, if there were some sort of plan for men like me, I think we could do a lot of good.

—You talking about your canal again?

—A canal, a spaceship. A moon colony. Maybe just a bridge. I don’t know. But the walking around, sitting, eating at tables … It doesn’t work. We need something else.

—What do you want to build? The world’s already built.

—So I just walk around in an already-built world? That’s a joke.

—That’s the joke you live in.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“—Thomas, I did not think you some miracle bestowed upon me. You were born and I was happy to have you. And I don’t think you thought of me as some miracle, either. We were, or should have been, partners. I was happy you existed and wanted you to thrive. My hope was that you were happy to exist and that you yourself would endeavor to thrive. But instead you were aggrieved by your existence and my role in it. I think that’s why you were so drawn to Christ.

—I wasn’t drawn to Christ. What does that mean?

—You used to draw the crucifix on your notebooks. Other kids were drawing spaceships or Grateful Dead skulls or penises, but you were drawing crucifixes. You thought that was you, suffering on the cross. I considered you a partner and an equal but you wanted to be beneath me and a martyr.

—You’re the one who brought me to church.
—I brought you once. You know how I hate Christianity and all that wretched iconography. You know what? You see pictures of Buddha and he’s sitting, reclining, at peace. The Hindus have their twelve-armed elephant god, who also seems so content but not powerless. But leave it to the Christians to have a dead and bloody man nailed to a cross. You walk into a church and you see a helpless man bleeding all over himself—how can we come away hopeful after such a sight? People bring their children to mass and have them stare for two hours at a man hammered to a beam and picked at by crows. How is that elevating? It’s all about accountability for them.

—What is?

—The Christians, the Bible. It’s all about who’s at fault. A whole religion based on accountability. Who’s to blame? What’s the judgment? Who gets punished? Who gets jailed, banished, killed, drowned, decimated. You want to know the main takeaway most people got from Jesus’s death? Not sacrifice, nothing like that. The takeaway, after all that Old Testament judgment, is that the Jews did it.

—Incredible.

—You loved it, though. Especially as a teenager. Young men love martyrdom. You get to be the victim and the hero at the same time.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“The sun was still low, and everything was golden, and I thought I was seeing my destiny.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“No vision has ever come true, no promise has ever been kept. But then there was you, and you were the promise that would obliterate all of the disappointments of the past. Everything about you insisted on it. Your color, your hair, the way light projects from every part of you. You were the sun that would burn away sponge putrid broken promises of the world.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“-And I'll be safe?
-To what end?
-To keep living.
-That's my point. That's not enough.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“Your memory has always been given to opportunistic revision.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“—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. —You were bored. —I wasn’t bored. I was dying. I am dying. But this week was different. There was alignment and order and a coming-to. —”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“Every fucking suburb has a SWAT team.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“loud it is in here? You hear the echo? —Help! Help! —I’m so disappointed in you, Kev.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?