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Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character. -- David Sedaris
I felt uncomfortable calling myself a writer until I started with 'The New Yorker,' and then I was like, 'Okay, now you can call yourself that.' -- David Sedaris
Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it. -- David Sedaris
Art isn't about following the rules. It's about breaking them. -- David Sedaris
Every so often my life will feel like a story. It doesn't have to be a big thing; in fact, most often, it's just the opposite. -- David Sedaris
It make one's mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment. -- David Sedaris
Then the flight attendants, garbage bags in hand, glided down the aisle, looking each one of us square in the face and whispering, without discrimination, Your trash. You're trash. Your family's trash. -- David Sedaris
People ask if I miss it, but they don't understand that American culture is so ubiquitous that there's nothing to miss. I don't see myself moving back. It's not that I hate the United States. I just always thought it would be a shame not to live in a foreign country. -- David Sedaris
Even if I were informed, what's the likelihood of changing anyone's opinion, especially a couple of strangers'? If my own little mind is nailed shut, why wouldn't theirs be? -- David Sedaris
I've never made up events, but I've always been a big exaggerator. It's written on my humorist license that I'm allowed to do that. -- David Sedaris
What's the trick to remembering that a sandwich is masculine? What qualities does it share with anyone in possession of a penis? I'll tell myself that a sandwich is masculine because if left alone for a week or two, it will eventually grow a beard. -- David Sedaris
I realized I was a teacher when I felt warm during class and got up to open the door. Later on there was noise in the hallway, so I got up and shut it. Students can't open and close the door whenever they feel like it. -- David Sedaris
The houses looked like something a child might draw, a row of shaky squares with triangles on top. Add a door, add two windows. Think of putting a tree in the front yard, and then decide against it because branches aren't worth the trouble. -- David Sedaris
Poor, chubby Annette Kelper, who desperately tries to pretend that nobody notices the fact that she's balding on top of her head. That's right. Look closely - balding just like a man. Perhaps Randy feels sorry for chrome-dome Annette. -- David Sedaris
The good thing about being gay was always that you didn't have a wedding. People would say, "He's gay, but at least he didn't make us go to his wedding. He didn't make us fly across the country. He didn't make us choose between the fish and the beef." -- David Sedaris
Six months earlier, my ice breaker concerned a stripper who became a quadriplegic and eventually had her vagina eaten away by bedsores, not the easiest thing to wrangle into a conversation. But if I could pull that off, I figured that a burning mouse should pose no problem. -- David Sedaris
We can't profess love without talking through hand puppets. -- David Sedaris
I'm for gay elopement, not for gay weddings. I've been with my boyfriend for twenty years. I don't feel like that would validate our relationship in any way. But I would really fight for someone else to have the right. Just elope, though, please. -- David Sedaris
Sometimes I say to myself, 'Oh, I wish I could win a Tony Award', although I'm not that bothered. -- David Sedaris
I think if you write humor, then people don't - you know - they don't give you that much credit. They tend to think you just dictate your stories into a tape recorder. And I'm not necessarily insulted by that, because I think that just means that it looks easy. -- David Sedaris
This left me alone to solve the coffee problem - a sort of catch-22, as in order to think straight I need caffeine, and in order to make that happen I need to think straight. -- David Sedaris
If you write a phrase and think, 'Wow, that's really poetic, that's really pretty, I really nailed it,' you get rid of it [because] you've overdone it. -- David Sedaris
If I'd been burned alive because of bad grades, my parents would have killed me, especially my father, who meant well but was just a little too gung ho for my taste. -- David Sedaris
Faced with an exciting question, science tended to provide the dullest possible answer. -- David Sedaris
My first boyfriend was black as well, but that doesn't prove I'm color-blind, just that I like big butts. -- David Sedaris
If you are any kind of an artist, then validation ... can be a result, but you're going to do the work anyway. Because you're just wired that way. It's so engrained, it's such a part of your personality that you don't just stop doing it. -- David Sedaris
Do you have a feel for the guitar? Do you have any idea what this little baby is capable of?" Without waiting for an answer, he climbed up into his chair and began playing "Light My Fire," adding, "This one is for Joan. -- David Sedaris
In the role of Mary, six-year-old Shannon Burke just barely manages to pass herself off as a virgin. -- David Sedaris
I noticed my mother's face assume an expression she reserved for unspeakable horror. I had seen this look only twice before: once when she was caught in the path of a charging, rabid pig and then again when I told her I wanted a peach-colored velveteen blazer with matching slacks. -- David Sedaris
If you read someone else's diary, you get what you deserve. -- David Sedaris
The drama bug strikes hardest with Jews, homosexuals and plump women who wear their hair in bangs. These are people who, for one reason or another, desperately crave attention -- David Sedaris
If finding an apartment is like falling in love, buying one is like proposing on your first date and agreeing not to see each other until the wedding. -- David Sedaris
Adrienne started teaching a few months ago in Denver and wrote that it leaves you with a constant feeling of deceiving people. That you know nothing they don't, or couldn't learn on their own if they cared to. -- David Sedaris
Boxes of records made me think that LPs should be outlawed or at least limited to five per person, and I soon came to despise the type who packs even her empty shampoo bottles, figuring she'll sort things out and throw them away once she's settled into her new place. -- David Sedaris
Oh, for Christ's sake,' I hear. 'Can we please just try to have a good time?' This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn't work. I've tried it. -- David Sedaris
I love getting attention, just like a child loves it, and it's never worn off. So when people say, oh the book signings go on, why would I shoo away someone who's giving me attention? What part of standing in line for 10 hours to say how much they love you is bad to you? -- David Sedaris
The two of you grew apart,' my mother would say. She made it sound as if we'd veered off in different directions, though in fact we had the exact same destination. I just never made it. -- David Sedaris
High school taught me a valuable lesson about glasses: Don't wear them. Contacts have always seemed like too much work, so instead I just squint, figuring that if something is more than ten feet away, I'll just deal with it when I get there. -- David Sedaris
Anyone who watches even the slightest amount of TV is familiar with the scene: An agent knocks on the door of some seemingly ordinary home or office. The door opens, and the person holding the knob is asked to identify himself. The agent then says, I'm going to ask you to come with me. -- David Sedaris
He secretly thinks he looks like Marlon Brando, but take a good look a young Marlin Perkins is more like it! Maybe that's what he sees in Annette Kelper - he's an animal lover. -- David Sedaris
I like books on tape, and will listen to just about anything. -- David Sedaris
Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable downswing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or you'll run out of dope or liquor and realize that it was all you ever had in common. -- David Sedaris
I won't put in a load of laundry, because the machine is too loud and would drown out other, more significant noises - namely, the shuffling footsteps of the living dead. -- David Sedaris
We were standing near the Lollipop Forest when we realized that Santa is an anagram of Satan ... Overhearing the customers we would substitute the Satan for the world Santa. -- David Sedaris
God was someone I wound up turning over and over in my mind each night ... Was He punishing me with this meal or was He rewarding me? Did He actively watch me or take me for granted like a fish you don't notice until it's floating on the surface of the tank? -- David Sedaris
You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger. -- David Sedaris
I love things made out of animals. It's just so funny to think of someone saying, 'I need a letter opener. I guess I'll have to kill a deer. -- David Sedaris
I like high school and college writing textbooks and find them very helpful. Whenever I'm stuck and seem to have no ideas, I open one up and turn to the back. There I'll find questions like, "Have you had any experiences with an alcoholic or a sailor?" -- David Sedaris
Back in New York I took full advantage of my status as a native speaker. I ran my mouth to shop clerks and listened in on private conversations, realising I'd gone an entire month without hearing anyone complaint that they were "stressed out". -- David Sedaris
Trying to explain moral principles to Khe Sahn was like reviewing a standard 1040 tax form with a house cat! -- David Sedaris
Having been destroyed, it is now indestructible, meaning I can wear it without worry. For half this price, I could have bought an intact sweater, thrown it to a tiger, and wrenched it back myself, but after a certain age, who has that kind of time? -- David Sedaris
This grown man who now phones his father to say, Motherfucker, I ain't seen pussy so long, I'd throw stones at it. -- David Sedaris
My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves. -- David Sedaris
It is sad because you would like to believe that everyone is unique and then they disappoint you every time by being exactly the same, asking for the same things, reciting the exact same lines as though they have been handed a script. -- David Sedaris
A few years later, in the midst of a brief academic setback, she trained him to act as her emotional cheerleader. I'd call and hear him in the background, screaming, "We love you, Lisa!" and "You can do it! -- David Sedaris
You're not going to throw this away, are you?" she says, and she'll be talking about the grains of rice in the bottom of the salt shaker. "No, Mrs. Peacock, by all means, you take them. They'll come in handy when your son gets out of prison and marries your niece. -- David Sedaris
he's braw and pulchritudinous, -- David Sedaris
When it comes time to decide who gets the bottom bunk, I think anyone would agree that there's a lot to be said for doing things the hard way. -- David Sedaris
If you don't think a mental patient has the right to bring a sawed-off shotgun to the church where his ex-girlfriend is getting married, you're part of the problem. -- David Sedaris
It bothered me that the bag bothered me more than head did, but what are you going to do? A person doesn't conciously choose what he focuses on. Those things choose you, and, once they do, nothing, it seems, can shake them. -- David Sedaris
A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at. -- David Sedaris
I think it's important to take chances. -- David Sedaris
Having spent my life trying to fit the will of others, I was unable to distinguish between what I enjoyed and what I thought I should enjoy. -- David Sedaris
Hugh consoled me, saying, "Don't let it get to you. There are plenty of things you're good at."
When asked for some examples, he listed vacuuming and naming stuffed animals. He says he can probably come up with a few more, but he'll need some time to think. -- David Sedaris
Scream at the mangled leather carcass lying at the foot of the stairs, and my parents would roar with laughter. That's what you get for leaving your wallet on the kitchen table. -- David Sedaris
My family isn't really all that different from anyone else's. Well, maybe they're a bit more entertaining. -- David Sedaris
What other people call dark and despairing, I call funny. -- David Sedaris
Bitch, I'm here to tell you that it's going to be all right. We'll get through this shit, motherfucker, just you wait. -- David Sedaris
I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why refer to lady crack pipe or good sir dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied? -- David Sedaris
I wasn't broken, just resting, readying myself for the next big thing. -- David Sedaris
Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window. -- David Sedaris
There was a sink for washing glasses and an assortment of cartoon napkins illustrating the lighter side of alcoholism. -- David Sedaris
The fetus was minute - a congregation of loitering cells - and as with anything that informal, there was a good chance that it might disperse. -- David Sedaris
Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit? -- David Sedaris
I've maintained old friendships, like with people I knew in the nineteen-seventies, but have lost the knack for meeting new people. This has a lot to do with my writing schedule. I don't want to be disturbed, and the willingness to be disturbed is, I think, part of being a good friend. -- David Sedaris
The autopsy took place in the morning and was the best argument for the buddy systemI had ever seen. Never live alone, I told myself. Before you chane a lightbulb, call someone from the other room and have him watch until you are finished. -- David Sedaris
It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection. -- David Sedaris
The next summer we went to France for six weeks, and I added another 420 words, most of them found in the popular gossip magazine, 'Voici'. "Man-eater", I'd say. "Gold digger, roustabout, louse".
"Who are you talking about?" my neighbors would ask. "What social climber? Where? -- David Sedaris
Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section. -- David Sedaris
It was one of those situations I often find myself in while traveling. Something's said by a stranger I've been randomly thrown into contact with, and I want to say, Listen. I'm with you on most of this, but before we continue, I need to know who you voted for in the last election. -- David Sedaris
Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it. -- David Sedaris
In my experience, it was hard to write without your preferred tools, but impossible to write without a cigarette. -- David Sedaris
On a busy day twenty-two thousand people come to visit Santa, and I was told that it is an elf's lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity. I promised to keep that in mind. -- David Sedaris
I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn't like it, and changed. -- David Sedaris
It was like seeing someone who wore a striped tie or parted his hair on the left - a detail, but not a telling one. -- David Sedaris
I've never gone on Facebook and am not sure I understand it. The same goes for Twitter. I have someone sending tweets and pretending to be me, but I don't know why. -- David Sedaris
I gave my mother a matching set [of mugs] for Christmas, and she accepted them as graciously as possible, announcing that they would make the perfect pet bowls. The mugs were set on the kitchen floor and remained there until the cat chipped a tooth and went on a hunger strike. -- David Sedaris
They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgable in the fields of plumbing and electricity. -- David Sedaris
And I'm here to tell you that, as long as you keep your eyes shut, it's really not that bad. -- David Sedaris
There are lots of things that happen to me that I don't write about. -- David Sedaris
Each one of us is left to choose our own quality of life and take pleasure where we find it with the understanding that, like Mom used to say, sooner or later something's gonna get you. -- David Sedaris
I need to touch the person's head again. Experience has taught me that you can do this three times before the head's owner either yells at you or rings for the flight attendant. -- David Sedaris
The whole notion of the nursing home was something dreamed up by people like my mother; American women with sunglasses, always searching for their tanning lotion or cigarette lighters. -- David Sedaris
The things I've bought from strangers in the dark would curl your hair. -- David Sedaris
I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like. -- David Sedaris
It hardly seemed fair, because, unlike a horse or a Seeing Eye dog, the whole glory of being a bird is that nobody would ever put you to work. -- David Sedaris
Like most seasoned phonies, I roundly suspect that everyone is as disingenuous as I am. -- David Sedaris
It was the look you get when facing a sudden and insurmountable danger: the errant truck, the shaky ladder, the crazy person who pins you to the linoleum and insists, with increasing urgency, that everything you know and love can be undone by a grape. -- David Sedaris
You'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to know what you're getting yourself into, so if there's blame, blame yourself. -- David Sedaris
There were no computers in my high school, and the first two times I attempted college, people were still counting on their fingers and removing their shoes when the numbers got above ten. -- David Sedaris
Isn't that sweet of my only son to travel all this way so he can whine about his pathetic little friend? Maybe if I weren't strapped to my deathbed I could muster up the strength to give a damn. -- David Sedaris
The reverend insists we occupy the first pew. He rang us up not long ago, tipsy
he's a tippler
saying that our faces brought him closer to God. And it's true, we're terribly good-looking people. -- David Sedaris
In my dream world gay people in America would get the right to marry, and not a one of them would use that right. -- David Sedaris
You have what we in France call 'good time teeth,'" she said. "Why on earth would you want to change them?" "Um, because I can floss with the sash to my bathrobe? -- David Sedaris
I always used to reach for the cigarette when the phone rang, and I figured nobody would ever call me in Tokyo. The time difference is so profound it's, like, already September in Tokyo, and I figured nobody would be able to work it out. -- David Sedaris
That man tried to picka my frienda's pocketoni! -- David Sedaris
You meet people who say, "Oh, I'd like to do such-and-such, but I don't have the time." But it always seemed to me like you make the time. And if you have a wife or a job, if you have kids or whatever, you find a way. If you really want to do it, you make the time. -- David Sedaris
We flew to Los Angeles, where I secured a new passport. The picture in my stolen one wasn't half bad, but in the new one I look like a penis with an old person's face drawn on it. -- David Sedaris
A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit. -- David Sedaris
I'm not a reporter but the 'New Yorker' treats everyone like a reporter. -- David Sedaris
Perhaps the little Negro girl was holding a concealed razor blade. Maybe she was one of the troublemakers out for a fresh white scalp. -- David Sedaris
I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration. -- David Sedaris
Everyone had taken their places, when I excused myself to visit the bathroom, and there, in the toilet, was the absolute biggest turd I have ever seen in my life - no toilet paper or anything, just this long and coiled specimen, as thick as a burrito. -- David Sedaris
When someone tell me they illegally downloaded one of my audiobooks I think, Thanks a lot, Pal. When someone tells me they checked my book out of the library, I'm delighted. I've always been a big library user, and feel a kinship with others who do the same thing. -- David Sedaris
the man with one hand turned on an enormous radio and tuned it to a mastermix station where the songs are not sung so much as bleated. Bleated and repeated. -- David Sedaris
That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. Much work and someday, you talk pretty. People start love you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay. -- David Sedaris
His voice was high and strange, as if it had been recorded and was now being played back at a faster speed. -- David Sedaris
You haven't lived until you've sailed -- David Sedaris
What are you, tap dancing up there? You want a put on a show, do you? Well, the theater's closed for the night. Take your act on the road; it's four o'clock in the morning,goddamnit. -- David Sedaris
Shit is the tofu of cursing and can be molded to whichever condition the speaker desires. Hot as shit. Windy as shit. I myself was confounded as shit ... -- David Sedaris
It's hard to love a place that's outlawed smoking but finds it perfectly acceptable to serve raw fish in a bath of chocolate. -- David Sedaris
People ask me, 'Have you ever considered doing stand-up?' To me it would be less offensive if someone asked me, 'Have you ever considered dental implants?' -- David Sedaris
It was a father, one hand resting teapot-style on his hip, and the other - what would be the spout - formed into a fist. -- David Sedaris
I pulled back because I am not a hugger. Never have been. When someone wraps their arms around me, I shut down and stand there with my eyes closed, waiting for it to be over. -- David Sedaris
I hated leaving a hole in the smoking world, and so I recruited someone to take my place. People have given me a lot of grief, but I'm pretty sure that after high school, this girl would have started anyway, especially if she chose the army over community college. -- David Sedaris
You're the man now,' she said to me after my father died, 'you're the man.' Then she turned to Popeye, our calico tom, and said, 'You're the cat now, Popeye, you're the cat,' as if she'd always worn a veil over her face and had never known we were men and cats all along. -- David Sedaris
Some friendships are formed by a commonality of interests and ideas: you both love judo or camping or making your own sausage. Other friendships are forged in alliance against a common enemy. -- David Sedaris
The lower bunks, both of us longing to be pinned. "You kids think you invented sex," my mother was fond of saying. But hadn't we? With no instruction manual or federally enforced training period, didn't we all come away feeling we'd discovered something unspeakably modern? -- David Sedaris
Dad followed his I'm-So-Disappointed speech with a lecture on career opportunities.
"You're going to study literature and get a job doing what?" he said. "Literaturizing? -- David Sedaris
It's just a penis, right? Probably no worse for you than smoking. -- David Sedaris
Like anyone nostalgic for a time he didn't live through, I chose to weed out the little inconveniences: polio, say, or the thought of eating stewed squirrel. The world was simply grander back then, somehow more civilized, and nicer to look at. -- David Sedaris
All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints. -- David Sedaris
The rules were just different back then, especially in regard to corporal punishment. Not only could you hit your own children, but you could also hit other people's. -- David Sedaris
The message was that if something is free, you should only take the best. If, on the other hand, you're forced to pay, it's best to lower the bar and not be so choosy. -- David Sedaris
I've always had a way with the little people, making it a point to humor them without looking down my nose at their wasted empty lives. -- David Sedaris
I don't know why it was, exactly, but nothing irritated my father quite like the sound of his children's happiness. Group crying, he could stand, but group laughing was asking for it, especially at the dinner table. -- David Sedaris
What can you say about the family who is suing the railroad after their drunk son was killed walking on the tracks? Trains don't normally sneak up on people. Unless they've derailed, you pretty much know where to find them. -- David Sedaris
I didn't know about the rest of the class, but when Bastille Day eventually rolled around, I planned to stay home and clean my oven. -- David Sedaris
There was my life before I told a strange woman in a negligee that I was a homosexual, and now there would be my life after, two chapters so dissimilar in style and content that they might have been written by different people. -- David Sedaris
Boston's "That is good" is Berlin's "Das ist gut." It's an excellent way to start and leaves the listener thinking, 'Hey, Ich kann do dis.' :D -- David Sedaris
I started writing when I was twenty. My first book came out when I was thirty-five. But I never expected that it would happen quickly. -- David Sedaris
He took a sip of my father's weak coffee and spit it back into the mug. "This shit's like making love in a canoe."
"Excuse me?"
"It's fucking near water. -- David Sedaris
The position was offered at the last minute, when the scheduled professor found a better-paying job delivering pizza. -- David Sedaris
I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives. -- David Sedaris
I hate you' she said to me one afternoon. 'I really, really hate you.' Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help but take it personally. -- David Sedaris
Motherfucker, you haven't got the fucking balls God gave a goddamned church mouse. You crawled out of your mama's tattered old pussy, grabbed hold of her milk stained titties, and you ain't never looked back, motherfucker. -- David Sedaris
Sometimes with 'The New Yorker,' they have grammar rules that just don't feel right in my mouth. -- David Sedaris
The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I've discovered it can work miracles as long as you keep telling yourself, I want to love, I want to live ... -- David Sedaris
My sister's the type who religiously watches the fear segments of her local Eyewitness News broadcasts, retaining nothing but the headline ... Everything is dangerous all of the time, and if it's not yet been pulled off the shelves, then it's certainly under investigation
so there. -- David Sedaris
Lovers of audio books learn to live with compromise. -- David Sedaris
As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character. -- David Sedaris
Up close the city constitutes an oppressive series of staircases, but from a distance it inspires fantasies of wealth and power so profound that even our communists are temporarily rendered speechless. -- David Sedaris
I love 'Glee.' I cry all the time when I watch 'Glee' because I don't know if it's satire or melodrama and that makes me feel like the writing is aware of itself, and that makes it okay to cry. -- David Sedaris
The real life of the party is flattened beneath the bed, taping actual sex encounters, not sitting cross-legged on the floor with a guitar, embarrassing himself and others. -- David Sedaris
Nobody likes having a problem, but having a convoluted, bureaucratic one is even more galling. -- David Sedaris
Like everything else, holiday gifts escalate. The presents get better and better until one year you decide you don't need anything else and start making donations to animal shelters. Even if you hate dogs and cats, they're somehow always the ones who benefit. -- David Sedaris
Do I exaggerate? Boy, do I, and I'd do it more if I could get away with it. -- David Sedaris
Missing a nose. With these children Santa has to be careful not to ask, And what would you like for Christmas? -- David Sedaris
At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me. -- David Sedaris
My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world. -- David Sedaris
He die one day, and then he go above of my head to live with your father." He weared the long hair, and after he died, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples." He nice, the Jesus. -- David Sedaris
Sometimes you read something and it's just
it doesn't invite a reader ... Sometimes you read something and it's not saying, 'oh come in, come in have a seat. I'm going to tell you what happened.' Perhaps my writing comes off as conversational ... and that takes effort. -- David Sedaris
There are things you forget naturally-computer passwords, your father's continuing relationship with life-and then there are things you can't forget that you wish you could. -- David Sedaris
Most of my ribbons were for good sportsmanship, a backhanded compliment if ever there was one. -- David Sedaris
I've been keeping diaries for 27 years. -- David Sedaris
No one writes dialect better than Flannery O'Connor. No one should even try. -- David Sedaris
Nobody dreams of the things he already has. -- David Sedaris
The hippo did, and I heard what sounded at first like a rabble, many voices talking over one another. Then I realized that they weren't talking.
"Let me get this straight," the hippo said when I explained what was going on. "Leeches are singing inside my asshole. -- David Sedaris
Eventually I would set him straight, but until then, at least for another few seconds, I wanted to stay in this happy place. So loved and protected. So fulfilled. -- David Sedaris
In the Netherlands now, I imagine it's legal to marry your own children. Get them pregnant, and you can abort your unborn grandbabies in a free clinic that used to be a church. -- David Sedaris
But I have no mind for business and considered staying awake to be enough of an accomplishment. -- David Sedaris
Someone in our family had taken to wiping his or her ass on the bath towels. What made this exceptionally disturbing was that all our towels were fudge-colored. You'd be drying your hair when, too late, you noticed an unmistakable odor on your hands, head, and face. -- David Sedaris
When you're young it's easy to believe that such a opportunity will come again, maybe even a better one. -- David Sedaris
She just happens to be my father, young man, and I'd appreciate it of you'd show her a little respect. -- David Sedaris
If a person who constantly reads is labeled a bookworm, then I was quickly becoming what might be called a tapeworm. -- David Sedaris
A week after my drugs ran out, I left my bed to perform at the college, deciding at the last minute to skip both the doughnut toss and the march of the headless plush toys. Instead, I just heated up a skillet of plastic soldiers, poured a milkshake over my head and called it a night. -- David Sedaris
He has a passport," my classmates would whisper. "Quick, let's run before he judges us! -- David Sedaris
Though harsh in other respects, prison would be an excellent place to learn a foreign language - total immersion, and you'd have the new slang before it even hit the streets. -- David Sedaris
She took pictures of germs, viruses, and people reacting to germs and viruses. On weekends, for extra money, she photographed weddings, which really wasn't that much of a stretch -- David Sedaris
But all of a sudden they're poets, right, like that's all it takes - being in love. -- David Sedaris
On one tour, I was collecting stories about pet monkeys. You'd be surprised how many people have stories about monkeys. The problem is, most monkey stories end tragically. -- David Sedaris
The way I saw it, if my students were willing to pretend I was a teacher, the least I could do was return the favor and pretend that they were writers. -- David Sedaris
What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it. -- David Sedaris
I had to wrestle daily with both my inadequacy and my uncontrollable jealousy. I didn't want to kill her, but hoped someone else might do the job for me. -- David Sedaris
I attribute my wife's language to the fact that she's one-quarter spaniel. She says she's only an eighth, but, come on, the ears say it all. That and her mouth. (The Faithful Setter) -- David Sedaris
Dad said that the guy who can play guitar is going to be the life of the party. He's confusing life with death. -- David Sedaris
Today a child told Santa Ken that he wanted his dead father back and a complete set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Everyone wants those Turtles. -- David Sedaris
I was hoping the people of the world might be united by something more interesting, like drugs or an unarmed struggle against the undead. -- David Sedaris
I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later. -- David Sedaris
Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings -- David Sedaris
The woman spoke with a heavy western North Carolina accent, which I used to discredit her authority. Here was a person for whom the word 'pen' had two syllables. He people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready
so who was she to advise me on anything? -- David Sedaris
I don't like to read anything on the radio for the very first time, because I don't have any notion of a reaction. When I read it out loud, then I get an idea of that, and more of an idea of how to read. -- David Sedaris
I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed silence in an American theater. It's easy to believe that our audiences spend the day saying nothing, actually saving their voices for the moment the picture begins. -- David Sedaris
Don't tell me I don't know how to hate,' I wanted to say. Then I stopped and asked myself, 'Do you really want that to be your message? Think you can out-hate me, asshole? I was fucking hating people before you were even born! -- David Sedaris
It means 'female dog,'" I'd explained to my sisters, "but it also means 'a woman who's crabby and won't let you be yourself. -- David Sedaris
This is a busy week with me and lunatics, whom I tend to see as either signs or messengers. -- David Sedaris
Most of the blame goes to the director, who seems to have picked up her staging secrets from the school's crossing guard. -- David Sedaris
He looked as though his life had not only passed him by but paused along the way to spit in his face. -- David Sedaris
I said that Santa no longer traffics in coal. Instead, if you're bad he comes to your house and steals things. -- David Sedaris
On the off chance my caller would tell me to quit drinking, I positioned myself on the sofa with two six-packs and a bottle of nice scotch. Then I turned on the TV and ate a sandwich made from leftover chicken lo mein. I call it a Chanwich. -- David Sedaris
Most people, or at least most of the people that I've come into contact with, would like to be written about. -- David Sedaris
Right, I breast feed baby camels in my backyard just for the freaking fun of it. Just tell me where you live, Pinocchio, and save the baloney for lunch. -- David Sedaris
The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate. -- David Sedaris
It didn't seem fair to me that Jon Stewart's rally didn't get the same kind of attention that Glenn Beck's did. Why was Beck's seen as checking the thermometer of the country, and Jon Stewart just dismissed as a satirist? -- David Sedaris
I asked her, dreamily, if we had met, and when she told me that we had not, I gave her a little finger wave, the type a leprechaun might offer a pixie who was floating by on a maple leaf. "Well, hi there," I whispered. -- David Sedaris
Say what you will about the south, but in North Carolina a hot dog is free to swing anyway it wishes. -- David Sedaris
Paul Rudnick is a champion of truth (and love and great wicked humor) whom we ignore at our peril. -- David Sedaris
Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat. -- David Sedaris
I don't like being left to my own thoughts. -- David Sedaris
Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read. -- David Sedaris
To be fair, he had never actually promised to be monogamous. That was my idea, and though I tried my hardest to convert him, the allure of other people was just too great. -- David Sedaris
I wanted it, I wanted, I wanted, but the moment it was mine, it ceased to interest me. -- David Sedaris
When asked "What do we need to learn this for?" any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness. -- David Sedaris
I'd tried to straighten him out, but there's only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer. -- David Sedaris
The humor section is the last place an author wants to be. They put your stuff next to collections of Cathy cartoons. -- David Sedaris
It's odd the things that people remember. Parents will arrange a birthday party, certain it will stick in your mind forever. You'll have a nice time, then two years later you'll be like, 'There was a pony there? Really? And a clown with one leg?' -- David Sedaris
While the builders worked on the cottage, Hugh lived in what used to be the stable but was later converted into a guesthouse, the kind you'd have if you wanted to either discourage guests or contain them in one spot while slowly depressing them to death. -- David Sedaris
I think it's good to have the alone time. Well, I kind of have to, because I have to be alone in order to work, so I have alone time. And then I go on tour and I have being-around-people time. -- David Sedaris
The better country club operated on the principle that Raleigh mattered, that its old families were fine ones, and that they needed a place where they could enjoy one another's company without being pawed at. Had we not found this laughable, our country club might have felt desperate. -- David Sedaris
The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day. -- David Sedaris
I explained that he was Chinese, and she asked if the movie would be in Chinese.
"No," I said, "he lives in America. In California. He's been there since he was a baby."
"Then what does it matter if he's Chinese?"
"Well," I said, "he's got ... you know, a sensibility. -- David Sedaris
During episodes of unemployment I find it rewarding to sleep as much as possible-anything from twelve to fourteen hours a day is a good starting point. Sleep spares you humiliation and saves money at the same time: nothing to eat, nothing to buy, just lie back and dream your life away. -- David Sedaris
I'd Begin to imagine my life in a foreign country, some faraway land where, if things went wrong, i could always blame somebody else, saying I'd never wanted to live there in the first place. -- David Sedaris
I needed to temper (my dad's) enthusiasm a bit (about attending Princeton), and so I announced that I would be majoring in patricide ... My mom was actually jealous. -- David Sedaris
Wants to set the world on fire, and if it can't happen by tomorrow morning at nine a.m., then life's just unfair and hardly worth living. -- David Sedaris
Motherfucker, you try that again and I'll come in there with a fucking coat hanger and give you something to fucking kick about -- David Sedaris
Use the word 'ya'll' and before you knew it, you'd find yourself in a haystack french-kissing an underage goat -- David Sedaris
She paused, and I took the opportunity to practice the only promotional skill at my disposal: fluttering my fingers over the telephone's mouthpiece, I attempted to cast a spell, silently chanting, It's me who you want. Me, me, me. -- David Sedaris
On a recent flight from Tokyo to Beijing, at around the time that my lunch tray was taken away, I remembered that I needed to learn Mandarin. "Goddamnit," I whispered. "I knew I forgot something. -- David Sedaris
But I don't distinguish between being laughed with, and laughed at. I'll take either. -- David Sedaris
Write relentlessly, until you find your voice. Then, use it. -- David Sedaris
As a foreigner in London, I like that there are so many other foreigners. -- David Sedaris
Half the people I know have dead animals in their freezers: reptiles, birds, mammals. Is that normal? -- David Sedaris
Neither were we allowed to choose what we ate. I have a friend whose seven-year-old will only consider something if it's white. Had I tried that, my parents would have said, "You're on," and served me a bowl of paste, followed by joint compound, and, maybe if I was good, some semen. -- David Sedaris
My boyfriend got me a computer three years ago. I'll admit it does make things a lot easier. When I was working on a typewriter and I whited out a line, often I would choose a word to go in the space just because it fit. Now I don't have to do that. -- David Sedaris
Neighbors would pass, and when they honked I'd remember that I was in my Speedo. Then I'd wrap my towel like a skirt around my waist and remind my sisters that this was not girlish but Egyptian, thank you very much. -- David Sedaris
The people I hung out with in my early twenties were middle-class and, at least to our minds, artistic. We'd all turned our backs on privilege, but comfortably, the way you can when you still have access to it. -- David Sedaris
Rather than admit defeat, I decided to change goals. -- David Sedaris
The nice thing about crowds is that someone can throw a bottle and you don't take it personally. -- David Sedaris
He led me to the barn, where a Mexican man stood waiting for his turn at the shower. "Whole-aah, Toe-moss," he shouted. -- David Sedaris
The beauty of an art school: as long as you can pay the tuition, they will never, even in the gentlest way, suggest that you have no talent. -- David Sedaris
I should be used to the way Americans dress when traveling, yet it still manages to amaze me. It's as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge saying, Fuck this. I'm going to Los Angeles! -- David Sedaris
You know you're young when someone asks you for money and you take it as a compliment. -- David Sedaris
I know it sounds calculating, but if you're not cute, you might as well be clever. -- David Sedaris
You have how many children in your family?" the teacher would ask. "I'm guessing you must be Catholic, am I right? -- David Sedaris
There's a short circuit between my brain and my tongue, thus "Leave me the fuck alone" comes out as "Well, maybe. Sure. I guess I can see your point. -- David Sedaris
I like listening to books as well, as that way you can iron at the same time. -- David Sedaris
Famous people like to choose friends who won't go around repeating their conversations and details about them. -- David Sedaris
If I'm riding my bike I just replay the same scenarios over and over in my head, like I haven't had a new mental adventure since high school. So that's what I like about books on tape, so my mind can't wander anywhere. -- David Sedaris
The part of my plan that made old people uncomfortable, that exposed them for the bigots they were - and on a Sunday! - still appealed to me. -- David Sedaris
That's the problem with wishes, they ensnare you. In fairy tales they're nothing but trouble, magnifying the greed and vanity of the person for whom they are granted. -- David Sedaris
He's as nutty as a vegan T-bone. -- David Sedaris
The third guest, a poet, had recently published a memoir about her cancer and the many operations performed in an effort to reconstruct her jaw. -- David Sedaris
If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt? -- David Sedaris
Something has changed, and now, when I look at my students, I see only people who are going to eat up my time. -- David Sedaris
They were Jesuits," she told me. "That means they believe in God but not in terlet paper. You should have seen their underwear. Disgusting. -- David Sedaris
It made no sense naturewise - owls and songbirds work different shifts, and even if they didn't they would still never be friends. -- David Sedaris
It's as though we had asked to have ice cubes in our wine, like, Ick, who are you? -- David Sedaris
Look at yourself on the day that you graduated from college, then look at yourself today. I did that recently and it was like, 'Yikes! What the hell happened? -- David Sedaris
Even then that without them, I was nothing. Not a son or a brother but just a boy - and -- David Sedaris
Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you've come to mow its lawns. -- David Sedaris
I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call "understanding" is basically just fantasizing. -- David Sedaris
I don't worry about being exposed. When I'm writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don't write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary. -- David Sedaris
This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable. -- David Sedaris
The thing to remeber is that more than anything in this world, these colored people wish they were white. -- David Sedaris
But instead I am applying for a job as an elf. Even worse than applying is the very real possibility that I will not be hired, that I couldn't even find work as an elf. That's when you know you're a failure. -- David Sedaris
Fly enough, and you learn to go brain-dead when you have to. It's sort of like time travel. One minute you're bending to unlace your shoes,and the next thing you know you're paying fourteen dollars for a fruit cup, wondering, How did I get here? -- David Sedaris
The dialogue fills the auditorium like an unrefrigerated boxcar of month-old steaks. -- David Sedaris
I sometimes read books on my iPad. -- David Sedaris
In books and movies infidelity always looks so compelling, so right. Here are people who defy petty convention and are rewarded with only the tastiest bits of human experience. -- David Sedaris
It makes me wonder sometimes. Remember a couple years ago, when Mexicans went on strike? It was talked about a little bit but not that much. But some old white people, and there aren't even that many, they put bonnets on, and then they control the news. -- David Sedaris
I never got the idea of a punishing God, just a really boring one. To see people growing up in the Carolinas who were Baptist, I knew there were others who felt God was going to send them to hell for any little thing, but not me. -- David Sedaris
Of course, the diary helps me as well. 'That wasn't your position on July 7, 1991,' I'll remind Hugh an hour after we've had a fight. I'd have loved to rebut him sooner, but it takes awhile to look these things up. -- David Sedaris
I am optimistic that things will fall into place, and one day I'll be sitting in New York City with correct bus fare in my pocket. -- David Sedaris
It was like watching someone you hate getting mugged: three seconds of hard-core violence, and when it was over you just wanted it to happen again. -- David Sedaris
My feet are completely flat, but for most of my life they were still shaped like feet. Now, thanks to bunions, they're shaped more like states, wide boring ones that nobody wants to drive through. -- David Sedaris
The interesting thing about gay people is that you can't really put on a wedding without them. They're the ones who make your dress, and do the flowers and the catering. They've toiled in the wedding industry all these years but were never allowed to do it themselves. -- David Sedaris
I always knew I wanted it to be illustrated. -- David Sedaris
Nobody pours stuffing like you do, my friend. -- David Sedaris
But at the end of every show we would realize that true happiness often lies where you very least expect it. It might arrive in a form of a gentle breeze or a handful of peanuts, but when it came, we would seize it with our own brand of folksy wisdom. -- David Sedaris
...Nothing is more disgusting than a glass of milk, especially French milk, which comes in a box and can sit unrefrigerated for five months, at which point it simply turns into cheese and is moved to a different section of the grocery store. -- David Sedaris
Like prisoners and shepherds, many of them didn't care who they had sex with, the idea being that what happens in the dark stays in the dark. It's the next morning you have to worry about - the name-calling, the slamming of doors, the charge that you somehow cast a spell. -- David Sedaris
He loved flowers, I loved flowers, and wasn't it beautiful that our mutual appreciation could transcend our various differences and somehow bring us together? -- David Sedaris
My sister Amy lives above a deaf girl and has learned quite a bit of sign language. She taught some to me and so now I am able to say, SANTA HAS A TUMOR IN HIS HEAD THE SIZE OF AN OLIVE. MAYBE IT WILL GO AWAY TOMORROW BUT I DON'T THINK SO. -- David Sedaris
When shit brings you down, just say 'fuck it', and eat yourself some motherfucking candy. -- David Sedaris
In my book, if you want to be treated like an old person, you have to look like one. That means no face-lift, no blond hair, and definitely no fishnet stockings. -- David Sedaris
I don't think my life is more interesting than anybody else's. -- David Sedaris
Leeches are singing in my asshole. -- David Sedaris
I don't know that it had anything to do with us, my father said. But how could it have not? Doesn't the blood of every suicide splash back on our faces? -- David Sedaris
In trying to be memorable, you wind up sounding unspeakably queer -- David Sedaris
After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations. -- David Sedaris
She knew what my mother did not: either you want a clean floor or you want to use a mop, but you can't have both. -- David Sedaris
The six to eight black men were characterized as personal slaves until the mid-1950s, when the political climate changed and it was decided that instead of being slaves they were just good friends. -- David Sedaris
I can't promise I'll never kill anyone again," he once said, strapping a refrigerator to his back. "It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters -- David Sedaris
Drawing attention to Gretchen's weight was the sort of behavior my mother referred to as 'stirring the turd,' and I did it a lot that summer. -- David Sedaris
I wonder whose job it was to assign these sexes in the first place. Did he do his work right there in the sanitarium, or did they rent him a little office where he could get away from all the noise? -- David Sedaris
For the first time in memory, I was unable to sleep not because I was anxious but because I was excited. To live in a damp crowded asshole and sing
if these guys don't know the secret to living, I don't know who does. (The Grieving Owl, page 157) -- David Sedaris
North Carolina is temperate and populated with well-meaning people; therefore I will engage in oral sex with another man. -- David Sedaris
It's always so satisfying when you can twist someone's hatred into guilt
make her realize that she was wrong, too quick to judge, too unwilling to look beyond her own petty concerns. -- David Sedaris
Real trouble doesn't walk around with a ponytail. It doesn't have a Mohawk or special shoelace patterns. Real trouble has a bad complexion and a Windbreaker. -- David Sedaris
When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard. -- David Sedaris
And it's bad enough to be caught in your underpants but even worse to be caught in your underpants scratching out a valium prescription on someone else's pad. -- David Sedaris
We sweat for our pretensions. It -- David Sedaris
I had no job at the time and was living off the cruel joke I referred to as my savings. -- David Sedaris
The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain old-fashioned fear. -- David Sedaris
It's not lost on me that I'm so busy recording life, I don't have time to really live it. -- David Sedaris
I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity. -- David Sedaris
We'd all turn our backs on privilege, but comfortably, the way you can when you still have access to it. No one wanted to call home asking for money, but we all knew that in a pinch our parents would come through for us. -- David Sedaris
There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows. -- David Sedaris
The difference between the first time I read something and the tenth time I read something is generally pretty profound. Even if the script is the same, just the way that I read it is different. -- David Sedaris
If you stepped out of the shower and saw a leprechaun standing at the base of your toilet, would you scream, or would you innately understand that he meant you no harm? -- David Sedaris
The woman had decided that I was a hard-ass, one of those guys who refuse under any circumstances to do anyone a favor. But it's not true. I just prefer that the favor be my idea, and that it leaves me feeling kind rather than bullied and uncomfortable. -- David Sedaris
I haven't the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out. -- David Sedaris
If you read somebody's diary, you get what you deserve. -- David Sedaris
I don't like travelling if I know I have to write about it. -- David Sedaris
I looked from face to face, exaggerating flaws and reminding myself that these boys did not like me. The hope was that I might crush any surviving atom attraction, but as has been the case for my entire life, the more someone dislikes me the more attractive he becomes. -- David Sedaris
Most movies, I forget about them while I'm watching them. I go every single day. But I've never thought about participating in any way. It's like being at home all day. It was never a goal to me. -- David Sedaris
To say that a humorist exaggerates to get big laughs, I don't see how that's big news. -- David Sedaris
People in trailers were canned and labeled much like the apple juice down at the plant, stamped with ingredients for all the world to see: chicken fried steak, overcooked vegetables, no working knowledge of any major Italian movie directors
the list went on and on. -- David Sedaris
I'm the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of the people I've never even met. -- David Sedaris
Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like. -- David Sedaris
What if I'd wasted my entire life comparing myself with people who didn't really matter? Try as I might, I still can't wrap my mind around it. -- David Sedaris
If I were president, I would turn the tables and allow the fetus to abort its mother. -- David Sedaris
If some people are "outed," are other people "inned"? Can we say that someone has been "besided" or "overed"? -- David Sedaris
People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American. -- David Sedaris
They're hungry for something they know nothing about, but we, we know all too well that the price of fame is the loss of privacy. -- David Sedaris
Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute. -- David Sedaris
I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen. -- David Sedaris
I tend to show everything I do to my family, to check they won't be offended. -- David Sedaris
The thing about sports, at least for guys, is that nobody ever defines the rules, not even in gym class. Asking what a penalty means is like asking who Jesus was. It's one of those things you're just supposed to know, and if you don't, there's something seriously wrong with you. -- David Sedaris
It was the artist's duty to find the appropriate objects, and the audience's job to decipher meaning. If the piece failed to work, it was their fault, not yours. -- David Sedaris
So which do you like better,State or Carolina? She was referring to the athletic rivalry between the Triangle area's two largest universities ... Definitely State. State all the way. -- David Sedaris
Man ordering at Butera's deli/prepared-foods counter: "Hey, give me one of them chickens what spins around. -- David Sedaris
All I can say is that if it helps to have friends, it helps even more to have friends who are governors! -- David Sedaris
What looks good now is guaranteed to embarrass you twenty years down the line, which is, of course, the whole problem with fashion. -- David Sedaris
she was the human equivalent of a storm cloud. -- David Sedaris
For my fifty dollars, I want to leave the doctor's office in tears, but instead I walk out feeling like a hypochondriac, which is one of the few things I'm actually not. -- David Sedaris
When it happens to you it's a national tragedy - Why aren't the papers reporting this? you wonder. Only when it happens to someone else do you realize what a dull story it really is. -- David Sedaris
Either he was suffering a terrible case of gas or he had a pint-size child practicing the trumpet in his back pocket. -- David Sedaris
Not giving is no different than taking. -- David Sedaris
One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work. -- David Sedaris
What brought us together was a love of nature, or, more specifically, of catching things and unintentionally killing them. -- David Sedaris
As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts. -- David Sedaris
True art was based upon despair, and the important thing was to make yourself and those around you as miserable as possible. -- David Sedaris
Look," I'll say to Jesus, "enough is enough. I suggest we nail some boards together and have ourselves an old-fashioned crucifixion. -- David Sedaris
I go to the movies at least five times a week, and after a while everything becomes a blur to me. -- David Sedaris
The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely. -- David Sedaris
I've often lost faith in myself, I've never lost it in my family -- David Sedaris
The landscape is best described as 'pedestrian hostile.' It's pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head. -- David Sedaris
He sounded like me when I sensed there were drugs around: All I know is that if someone wants to get high, or wants to watch while I smoke his dope, I'll do it. I really will. -- David Sedaris
I cry all the time when I watch 'Glee' because I don't know if it's satire or melodrama and that makes me feel like the writing is aware of itself, and that makes it OK to cry. -- David Sedaris
I might reinvent myself to strangers, but to this day, as far as my family is concerned, I'm still the one most likely to set your house on fire. -- David Sedaris
Here I am, just turned fifty, and I forgot that my father isn't dead yet! -- David Sedaris
For the first sixteen years we were together, I'd give Hugh chocolates for Valentine's Day, and he'd give me a carton of cigarettes. Both of us got exactly what we wanted, and it couldn't have been easier. -- David Sedaris
I just think that the people who say: 'That's not true' when someone tells a story at dinner are the people who didn't get any laughs when they told their story. -- David Sedaris
Watch this. 'Buenos Dios, Miguel.'"
A small, dark-eyed man looked up from his wood splitting, alarmed.
"They spook easy," Hobbs said.
Yes, well, people tend to do that when you come up behind them shouting, "Good God." It's just a habit, I guess. -- David Sedaris
The only bright spot in the entire evening was the presence of Kevin "Tubby" Matchwell, the eleven-year-old porker who tackled the role of Santa with a beguiling authenticity. The false beard tended to muffle his speech, but they could hear his chafing thighs all the way to the North Pole. -- David Sedaris
There is still the outside world to contend with. A world of backfiring cars, and their human equivalents. -- David Sedaris
Well, think about it," he said. "Exposing yourself to a girl is one thing. Doing it to a boy, though - the guy would have to be perverted. -- David Sedaris
If I'm stuck, I get up from my chair and I wash windows. Or ... clean the bathroom. Or vacuum the attic. There's always something to be done. -- David Sedaris
We give anonymously because the sackfuls of thank-you letters break our hearts with their clumsy handwriting and hopeless phonetic spelling. -- David Sedaris
She hit bottom when she physically attacked a deaf-mute. This was a boy of fourteen, a beloved neighborhood figure who delivered for the nearby deli. -- David Sedaris
Whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like. -- David Sedaris
I don't really do very well when I'm sent somewhere. A lot of magazines want to send you somewhere to do something. They want you to stow away on a ship, or something like that. -- David Sedaris
If nothing else, life in the suburbs promised that you might go from day to day without finding shit in your hair. -- David Sedaris
But songbirds are trash," the chicken said, and the guinea hen laughed, saying, "Well, then, I guess we could all use a little more trash in our lives. -- David Sedaris
Broke a nail clean off, and when it grew back it looked like a Brazil nut. -- David Sedaris
With practice I will eventually realize my goal; in the meantime, come to Paris and you will find me, headphones plugged tight in my external audio meatus, walking the quays and whispering, 'Has anything else been inserted into your anus? Has anything else been inserted into your anus? -- David Sedaris
Certain motherfuckers think they can fuck with my shit, but you can't kill the Rooster. You might can fuck him up some times, but, bitch, nobody kills the motherfucking Rooster. You know what I'm saying? -- David Sedaris
It was, I thought, what evil must smell like. -- David Sedaris
Besides, if I wanted to hear people speaking wall-to-wall French, all I had to do was remove my headphones and participate in what is known as 'real life,' a concept as uninviting as a shampoo cocktail. -- David Sedaris
The only real advice you can give anyone is to keep writing. -- David Sedaris
For to witness majesty, to find yourself literally touched by it - isn't that what we've all been waiting for? -- David Sedaris
I guess my guilty pleasure would be listening to the British audio versions of the 'Harry Potter' books. -- David Sedaris
In Paris you're always surrounded by French people. -- David Sedaris
Gambling to me is what a telephone pole might be to a groundhog. He sees that it's there but doesn't for the life of him understand why. -- David Sedaris
I'm dating myself, but this was before Jesus Christ. We worshiped a God named Sashatiba, who had five eyes, including one on the Adam's apple. -- David Sedaris
I would clear the table and Hugh would do the dishes, neither of us speaking and both of us wondering if this just might be the one to do it. 'I hear you guys broke up over a plastic hand,' people would say, and my rage would renew itself. -- David Sedaris
Good girl, Rachel. Now, let's get the hell out of here. Your mother has a headache that won't quit until you're twenty-one -- David Sedaris
If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever. -- David Sedaris
But most good movies have a gun in them. -- David Sedaris
I'm not a misogynist. I'm a misanthrope. I hate everyone equally. -- David Sedaris
In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, 'Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl'. -- David Sedaris
Live with liberty, and your imagination can soar. -- David Sedaris
College is the best thing that can ever happen to you, my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking.. -- David Sedaris
Standing in a two-hour line makes people worry that they're not living in a democratic nation. -- David Sedaris
I meet people at book signings. My record now, for signing, is ten and a half hours in one sitting. -- David Sedaris
Well, where did it come from?" I asked. "How did I get it?"
"How do we get most things?" he answered.
"We buy them? -- David Sedaris
In Japanese and Italian, the response to ["How are you?"] is "I'm fine, and you?" In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by "Not so good. -- David Sedaris
I went from having 50 listeners to 50 million listeners. -- David Sedaris
Thanks stadium pal! -- David Sedaris
There's a reason regular people don't appear on TV: we're boring. -- David Sedaris
We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well made cocktail. -- David Sedaris
All I do is lie, and that has made me immune to compliments. -- David Sedaris
Often I'd take out my magnifying glass and stare into the chaos that was her face. -- David Sedaris
In his work shirt and underpants, he looked powerful but also cartoonish, like a bear dressed up for a job interview. -- David Sedaris
Well, that's a hell of a reason to poison yourself. -- David Sedaris
Since when do politics affect a mammals ability to sustain a flame? That aside, who says a burning mouse can't run a distance of twelve feet? -- David Sedaris
The Bible says that it's all right to cast the first stone if someone dead is telling you to do it -- David Sedaris
Weeks passed, my suitcase grew more and more conventional. "I've got something for you," I'd say to a teenager. "It's nothing huge, -- David Sedaris
A new group, flexitarians, who eat meat if not too many people are watching. -- David Sedaris
My sister Tiffany told me years ago, 'You can never write about me.' Then she called six months ago and said she wanted to be in a story. She was worried people thought I didn't like her. -- David Sedaris
I don't have email. -- David Sedaris
My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out over things I didn't do, which only makes me look more suspect. -- David Sedaris
Snowball just leads elves on, elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game. -- David Sedaris
If you think too hard about anything it's bound to take the fun out of it. -- David Sedaris
To be exotic, on the other hand, one had to think not just outside the box but outside the world of boxes. -- David Sedaris
It is funny the things that run through your mind when you're sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers. -- David Sedaris
At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.
-- David Sedaris
It's safe to assume that by 2085 guns will be sold in vending machines but you won't be able to smoke anywhere in America. -- David Sedaris
And when Hugh would grow progressively Gandhi on me, I'd remind him that these were pests
disease carriers who feasted upon the dead and then came indoors to dance upon our silverware. -- David Sedaris
If practiced correctly, generosity can induce feelings of shame, inadequacy, and even envy, to name just a few. -- David Sedaris
Never fall asleep in a Dumpster, never underestimate a bee, never drive a convertible behind a flatbed truck, never get old, never get drunk near a train, and never, under any circumstances, cut off your air supply while masturbating. -- David Sedaris
Angels, she said, were God's way of saying howdy. -- David Sedaris
The problem isn't gaining weight, it's gaining it in the right place. -- David Sedaris
I see you that have a little swimming mouse -- David Sedaris
Here I've given him a good eight inches and a shot at immortality and he'll turn on me the same way he did last year when I asked him to pose for a few nude sketches. Ingrate -- David Sedaris
When I taught, a lot of my students weren't big readers, so they would write something and I realized that they thought it belonged in a book. Like, they didn't know what the inside of a book looked like, you know what I mean? -- David Sedaris
It is not unpleasant to hold someone else's warm teeth in your hand ... -- David Sedaris
He has a point there, that's harsh. Unfortunately, they never gave him a medal for it and as a result he brings it up time and time again. -- David Sedaris
I was a smart-ass, born and raised. This had been my curse and would continue to be so. -- David Sedaris
It's from Scandinavia! This, we learned, was the name of a region, a cold and forsaken place where people stayed indoors and plotted the death of knobs. -- David Sedaris
It really is torture to sit around the house and write all day. I'm thinking it might motivate me to finish the book faster, the thought that after it's finished I can return to housecleaning. The -- David Sedaris
The slumber party took place in what the Methodists called a family room, the Catholics used as an extra bedroom, and the neighborhood's only Jews had turned into a combination darkroom and fallout shelter. -- David Sedaris
Sometimes the sins you haven't committed are all you have left to hold onto. -- David Sedaris
Love seemed all the sweeter when it was misunderstood, condemned by the outside world. -- David Sedaris
I started writing one afternoon when I was twenty, and ever since then I have written every day. At first I had to force myself. Then it became part of my identity, and I did it without thinking. -- David Sedaris
Actually I liked that 'Let the Right One In,' that Swedish vampire movie. -- David Sedaris
When you read comic material and people aren't laughing how do you know they're listening. -- David Sedaris
The bow tie is like the pierced eyebrow of the Republican party. -- David Sedaris
Because I've always been a fairly nervous person. -- David Sedaris
That's what fantasies are for: they allow you to skip the degradation and head straight to the top. -- David Sedaris
I always think it's a good policy to like the people who like you. -- David Sedaris
To spend your days in the company of naked men - that was the life for me. -- David Sedaris
A person needed savings in order to move, but more than that he needed gumption. -- David Sedaris
Jeremy, Good luck on your first marriage. -- David Sedaris
Now it seems cruel, abusive even, but this all happened before the invention of self-esteem, which, frankly, I think is a little overrated. -- David Sedaris
In other parts of the country people tried to stay together for the sake of the children. In New York they tried to work things out for the sake of the apartment. -- David Sedaris
I giggled out loud at his stupidity. If anyone knew how to make a bed, it was a faggot. -- David Sedaris
Weird doors open. People fall into things. -- David Sedaris
Watch, hell,' Walt said. 'This is strip poker. What kind of homo wants to sit around and watch four guys get naked? -- David Sedaris
I just enjoy lying on the couch and reading a magazine. -- David Sedaris
The Korean man nodded, the way you do when you're a foreigner and understand that someone has finished a sentence. -- David Sedaris
Clatter of a typewriter suggests that you're actually building something. -- David Sedaris
Given enough time, I guess anything can look good. All it has to do is survive. -- David Sedaris
The man spoke with an accent, and though I couldn't exactly place it, I knew that he was poor. His voice had snakes in it. And dysentery, and mangoes. -- David Sedaris
Owl love you forever -- David Sedaris
Nothing irritated her more than these high-and-mighty vegetarians who ate meat sometimes and then decided that it didn't really count. -- David Sedaris
I hoped our lives would continue this way forever, but inevitably the past came knocking. Not the good kind that was collectible but the bad kind that had arthritis. -- David Sedaris
But I'm a humorist. I'm not a reporter, I never pretended to be a reporter. -- David Sedaris
For an American, though, Australia seems pretty familiar: same wide streets, same office towers. It's Canada in a thong, or that's the initial impression. -- David Sedaris
Occasionally I'd tune in to a music station, but I always preferred the sound of people talking, even if the subject was something I didn't care about -- David Sedaris
Also, I used to think that one day I might get someone to iron my shirts, but the truth is I really like doing them myself. -- David Sedaris
When they're born outside, crows come and pluck their eyes out. -- David Sedaris