# What Is the What

- Author: [Dave Eggers](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-eggers.md)
- Quotes: 4
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-eggers/what-is-the-what

## Quotes

> I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.

p. 474 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-eggers/what-is-the-what/i-speak-to-these.md)

> I cannot count the times I have cursed our lack of urgency. If I ever love again, I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.

p. 317 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-eggers/what-is-the-what/i-cannot-count.md)

> Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome.

p. 110 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-eggers/what-is-the-what/humans-are-divided.md)

> The pain is not great. But the symbolism is disagreeable.

p. 50 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dave-eggers/what-is-the-what/the-pain-is-not.md)