[After this interview Eggers is off to a meeting in midtown Manhattan. Then come more appointments and the following day a long drive to Pittsfield, Mass., where he will work a fund-raiser for Word Street, a tutoring center inspired by 826 NYC. His black travel bag sits at my feet like a dog begging to go for a walk.] I'm trying to cut down on travel, ... But with things like this, I really don't want to say no. |
I am myself a failed cartoonist, |
I am myself a failed cartoonist, There are a million reasons to ruin things. |
I don't think there's a neighborhood where more writers live. There is no neighborhood in the world - and I've looked - with more independent bookstores in such a small area. |
I try to get anybody coming to San Francisco to come to the Mission. Not to misuse the word 'authentic' - I think that's such a troubling word - but the Mission really does have all the best parts of San Francisco intersecting here. |
I'd rather people just borrow the idea and do their own thing in their own community, ... Whenever people can just start on their own, without our imprimatur, all the better. The model works, but we don't own the patent. |
It all sounds good, and it seems to me, if a system would work, this might be the spot. But frankly, I don't think we have any good numbers to tell us if it's a viable option at this point. |
It's kind of cute, the IV bag. |
It's not that our family has no taste, it's just that our family's taste is inconsistent. |
It's our theory that everything trickles down from there, ... That if you have high salaries, good conditions, you have good support. You have a lot of communication between teachers, you pay for teachers' supplemental training, and the students learn. |
Our town was rigid in many ways, in terms of the uniformity of things, the colors of skin, the makes of cars, the lushness of the lawns, but on top of that it was sort of a blank canvas so-and again, I guess this is true of any child-I was ready to quickly accept the sudden and total substitutions of all I knew to be true. |
People are strange, but more than that, they're good. They're good first, then strange. |
Status in itself is criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people. |
The house is a factory. |
The kids sit facing the white board and collectively tell a story, ... As they're coming up with the story, there's a typist sitting here, so they see their words coming up on the wall. |