Heroes of the Frontier Quotes

“She was done, gone. She had been comfortable, and comfort is the death of the soul, which is by nature searching, insistent, unsatisfied. This dissatisfaction drives the soul to leave, to get lost, to be lost, to struggle and adapt. And adaptation is growth, and growth is life. A human’s choice is either to see new things, mountains, waterfalls, deadly storms and seas and volcanoes, or to see the same man-made things endlessly reconfigured.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“The easiest way to witness the stupidity and misplaced hopes of 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.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“We live in a vengeful time. You didn't get the orange chicken you ordered or the sticky rice? And now you're already home? Meaning you'd have to drive all the way back to get the orange chicken and sticky rice you ordered? Injustice! And thus avenge. Avenge the proprietor's crimes! This [is] our contemporary version of balance, of speaking truth to power. Avenge the proprietor on thy customer-review site! Right the imbalance!”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“That only having left could she and her children achieve something like sublimity, that without movement there is no struggle, and without struggle there is no purpose, and without purpose there is nothing at all. She wanted to tell every mother, every father: There is meaning in motion.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“This was Josie’s preferred method of parenting: go someplace like this, with grand scale and much to be discovered, and watch your children wander and injure themselves but not significantly. Sit and do nothing. When they come back to show you something, some rock or mop of seaweed, inspect it and ask questions about it. Socrates invented the ideal method for the parent who likes to sit and do very little.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“Somehow she had to trust that they would use their bullets on targets, not on her family, that nonsensical trust seeming to be the core of life in America.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“First there is barbarism, no schools at all, all learning done at home, chaotically if at all. Then there is civil society, democracy, the right to free schooling for every child. Close on the heels of the right to free education is the right to pull these children out of the free schools and put them in private-schools--we have a right to pay for what is provided for free! And this is followed, inevitably and petulantly, by the right to pull them from school altogether, to do it yourself at home, everything coming full circle.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“This could be the cause of all modern neurosis . . . [;] the fact that we have no immovable identity, no hard facts. That everything we know as foundational truth is subject to change.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“The only explanation was that she was receiving instructions from extraplanetary overlords.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“We gravitate toward comfort, Josie thought, but it must be rationed. Give us one-third comfort and two-thirds chaos—that is balance.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“A loud whine cut through the day's quiet and Josie looked out the window to find a man wearing some kind of jetpack attached to a vacuum cleaner. Oh no. A leaf blower. 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.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“In her life Josie had heard only one or two people apologize. Wasn't that something? Wouldn't that be significant to future anthropologists? This was a time in history when no one was sorry. Sorry took too much courage, too much strength and faith and rightness to have a place in this cowardly century.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“A human's choice is either to see new things, mountains, waterfalls, deadly storms and seas and volcanoes, or to see the same man-made things endlessly reconfigured.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“Josie knew, then, that better than searching for a person of courage -- she'd been on this search for years, dear god -- better and possibly easier than searching for such people in the extant world was to 'create' them. She didn't need to find humans of integrity and courage. She needed to 'make' them.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“One of dem otters,” Ana said, and waved toward the bay. She had a skull in her little pink hands, and Josie noticed with horror that it had not been picked clean. There was still cartilage on it, and whiskers, and fur, something viscous, too. Josie conjured Socrates and thought of a question. “Why in hell did you pick this up?” In solidarity, the dogs lifted their heads to Ana and Paul, then ran off.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“That is their work, they imply, and they also imply that you, and your actual work, are fine but also neglectful and sad. They don’t say that, though. They say, Don’t worry if you can’t be there, at the mid-fall solstice sing-along, the late-winter sledding-song craft fair and potluck. Not a big deal with the mid-spring parent-student doubles badminton under-the-lights evening funmaker. No problem with the mother-daughter pajama party on every third Wednesday movie day Sound of Music bring your own guitar or lyre. No need to bring treats on your child’s birthday. No need to come in for career day. No need to swing by the opening of the new art studio which features real clay-throwing technology. Don’t care about art? Not an issue. No need, no need, no need, it’s fine, no problem, though you really are selfish and your children doomed. When they are first to try crack—they will try it and love it and sell it to our culture-loving children—we will know why.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“write the past in disappearing ink,”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“This was the common criminal pursuit of all contemporary humankind. Give my child an Ikea desk and twelve hours a day of sedentary typing. This will mean success for me, them, our family, our lineage. She would not pursue this. She would not subject her children to this. They would not seek these specious things, no. It was only about making them loved in a moment in the sun.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“but her style of parenting was predicated on hoping for things over which she had little or no control.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“Have we wasted precious space dust on you?”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“Oh no. A leaf blower. The easiest way to witness 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.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“This was the march of civilization. First there is barbarism, no schools at all, all learning done at home, chaotically if at all. Then there is civil society, democracy, the right to free schooling for every child. Close on the heels of the right to free education is the right to pull these children out of the free schools and put them in private-schools—we have a right to pay for what is provided for free! And this is followed, inevitably and petulantly, by the right to pull them from school altogether, to do it yourself at home, everything coming full circle.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“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. Sam”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“Running a business murders your ability to be the kind of friend people expect or deserve. Days and weeks go by and there can be no keeping up. Her best friends were her oldest friends, who did not expect constant contact. Everyone else was disappointed.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“Courage was the beginning, being unafraid, moving ahead, through small hardships, not turning back. Courage was simply a form of moving forward.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“There was the horror of morning, underslept, feeling she was on the precipice of something that felt like mono, the day already galloping away from her, her chasing on foot, carrying her boots. Then the brief upward respite after a second cup of coffee, when all seemed possible, when”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“The easiest way to witness the stupidity and misplaced hopes of all humanity is to watch, for twenty minutes, a human being using a leaf blower.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“Josie glanced back to the TV. Again the players seemed to be celebrating some minor achievement. It offended the eye at first, then Josie grew to understand it. That’s what’s missing in my life, she thought. The celebration of every single moment, like those fucking idiots on TV.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“Courage was simply a form of moving forward.”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier

“The feeling that your daughter is a deviant already and will only get worse. In a flash, you can see her as a feral adolescent, as a dirty-bomb teenager, a burst of invisible and spreading fury. Where is she now? She’s fled, not to her room but somewhere else, a closet, she always hides somewhere disturbing, a place befitting a German fairy tale. Believe”
― Dave Eggers, Heroes of the Frontier