Heather Stein

“the observer is, more often than not, passive. writing chiefly about his or her surroundings, and the people he or she meets. The writer reacts, instead of acts. Well, i suppose they [travel writers] do act, in that they have to do the traveling, choose the destinations, and so forth, but again, largely they are observant cargo, being shuttled from place to place with notebook in hand.”
― Dave Eggers

“This is something Mark Twain, or Samuel Clemens wrote, or whatever: "To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art.”
― Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity!

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Don't you know that what you can do, I can do? Don't you know that I can summon your own winds, move the plates of this earth, just as you do? This earth is not yours; it's ours. Don't you fucking know this? Why do you play with us when you know I will do the same, and worse, to you? I will bring the winds of your world to bear against you. I will take your winds and twist them and throw them to you. I will mix them with your oceans, I will wrench them together and send them up to you and watch you drown in screaming waters of the blood and bones of your favorites. Look at you. Look at you! You all hairless and white with eyes burning black and red --- what makes you so sure I won't hurt you the same way? ... What makes you think i won't stalk you to the corners of the earth to pay for this? What makes you so sure that I won't bring it all back to you? I shall have waters of blood cast yuo away! I will sit upon the mount and send judgment down upon you. You shall cleave to my house! Therefore shall evil come upon thee; and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know! ... To who will ye flee for help? And where will yet have your glory?--”
― Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity!