Life & Wisdom Quote by Dave Eggers

A lesser writer would defend the family’s taste outright; Eggers defends it sideways, with a grin you can hear in the syntax. “It’s not that” is the classic preemptive dodge, the move you make when you already know the charge has teeth. Taste, in this line, isn’t really about aesthetics. It’s a stand-in for class, cultural competence, and the low-grade shame that blooms when your preferences don’t add up to a clean, legible identity.

The joke hinges on the pivot from “no taste” to “inconsistent.” The first accusation implies a stable deficit; the rebuttal admits the mess but refuses the verdict. “Inconsistent” is doing a lot of work: it reframes what looks like ignorance as variety, what looks like tackiness as unpredictability, what looks like failure as a kind of freedom. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of saying, Yes, we’re chaotic, but chaos isn’t the same as emptiness.

Eggers’s broader project often lives in that emotional terrain: the earnestness of trying to tell the truth about family without turning them into saints or punchlines. The line feels like it comes from someone who has spent time in the social minefield of “good taste,” where liking the wrong thing at the wrong time becomes a minor moral offense. By choosing inconsistency, Eggers quietly rejects the idea that a family should present a unified brand. He keeps the affection intact while acknowledging the cringe, which is why it lands: it’s comedy as a pressure-release valve for intimacy.