David Sedaris Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

I can manage in a restaurant, take a cab, and even make small talk with the driver. "Do you have children?" I ask. "Will you take a vacation this year?" "Where to?" When he turns it around, as Japanese cabdrivers are inclined to do, I tell him that I have three children, a big boy and two little girls. If Pimsleur included "I am a middle-aged homosexual and thus make do with a niece I never see and a very small godson," I'd say that. In the meantime, I work with what I have. — David Sedaris

You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger. — 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

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

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

I tend to show everything I do to my family, to check they won't be offended. — 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

When you go to that other country you realize that in France and in England, you don't ask somebody what they do for a living when you meet someone. A lot of the obvious things, the shortcuts we take in America - in America you can talk about money all you want. You can ask how much they make, rent they pay, how much their house costs and how much their car costs, and they'll feel comfortable telling you. But it's scandalous to ask anyone in England or France a question like that. — David Sedaris

I don't write about sex because it's not really my subject. I love it when other people write about it, but it's not my subject, and I don't want anyone I've had sex with to write about it. Plus, you're in front of an audience, and they picture wherever you're writing about. I'm 52; no one in the audience wants to picture that. — David Sedaris

Its funny how certain objects convey a message
my washer and dryer, for example. They can't speak, of course, but whenever I pass them they remind me that I'm doing fairly well. "No more laundromat for you," they hum. My stove, a downer, tells me every day that I can't cook, and before I can defend myself my scale jumps in, shouting from the bathroom, "Well, he must be doing something. My numbers are off the charts." The skeleton has a much more limited vocabulary and says only one thing: "You are going to die. — 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

It was generally agreed that a coffin-size studio on Avenue D was preferable to living in one of the boroughs. Moving from one Brooklyn or Staten Island neighborhood to another was fine, but unless you had children to think about, even the homeless saw it as a step down to leave Manhattan. Customers quitting the island for Astoria or Cobble Hill would claim to welcome the change of pace, saying it would be nice to finally have a garden or live a little closer to the airport. They'd put a good face one it, but one could always detect an underlying sense of defeat. The apartments might be bigger and cheaper in other places, but one could never count on their old circle of friend making the long trip to attend a birthday party. Even Washington Heights was considered a stretch. People referred to it as Upstate New York, though it was right there in Manhattan. — 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 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

This is a busy week with me and lunatics, whom I tend to see as either signs or messengers. — 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

Most of my ribbons were for good sportsmanship, a backhanded compliment if ever there was one. — David Sedaris

It is never appropriate to comment on a woman's breasts. I would never do it on the street or at a supermarket, but when I'm sitting a table signing books, sometimes I notice that a woman will have remarkable breasts. And I will maybe quietly say something about it. It's not in a sexual way, because I'm a gay man - I would never say to a man "great ass" because that would be sort of creepy.. I hope it's not creepy to quietly tell a woman she has nice breasts. — 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

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

he's braw and pulchritudinous, — David Sedaris

The dialogue fills the auditorium like an unrefrigerated boxcar of month-old steaks. — David Sedaris

Across town, over in the East Village, the graffiti was calling for the rich to be eaten, imprisoned, or taxed out of existence. Though it sometimes seemed like a nice idea, I hoped the revolution would not take place during my lifetime. I didn't want the rich to go away until I could at least briefly join their ranks. — 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

You spend hours wrestling with yourself, trying to keep your vision intact, your intensity undiminished. Sometimes I have to stick my head under the tap to get my wits back. And for what? You know what publishing is like these days. Paper costs going up all the time. Nothing gets printed unless it can be made into a movie. Everything is media. Crooked politicians sell their unwritten memoirs for thousands. I've got a great idea for a novel. It's about a giant shark who's possessed by a demon while swimming in the Bermuda Triangle. And the demon talks in CB lingo, see? There'll be recipes in the back. — 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

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

Sometimes with 'The New Yorker,' they have grammar rules that just don't feel right in my mouth. — 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

Einstein wrote that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That said, is it crazier to repeatedly throw yourself against a window, or to repeatedly open that window, believing the creatures that are throwing themselves against it might come into your house, take a look around, and leave with no hard feelings? — 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

There was a sink for washing glasses and an assortment of cartoon napkins illustrating the lighter side of alcoholism. — 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

The walking tour guides one through the city's various landmarks, reciting bits of information the listener might find enlightening. I learned, for example, that in the late 1500s my little neighborhood square was a popular spot for burning people alive. Now lined with a row of small shops, the tradition continues, though in a figurative rather than literal sense. — 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

she was the human equivalent of a storm cloud. — 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

I'm sure my father said plenty of normal things to me when I was growing up, but what stuck, probably because he said it, like, ten thousand times, was "Everything you touch turns to crap." His other catchphrase was "You know what you are? A big fat zero."
Excerpt From: David Sedaris. "Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls." iBooks. — 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

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

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

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

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'd hoped the language might come on its own, the way it comes to babies, but people don't talk to foreigners the way they talk to babies. They don't hypnotize you with bright objects and repeat the same words over and over, handing out little treats when you finally say "potty" or "wawa." It got to the point where I'd see a baby in the bakery or grocery store and instinctively ball up my fists, jealous over how easy he had it. I wanted to lie in a French crib and start from scratch, learning the language from the ground floor up. I wanted to be a baby, but instead, I was an adult who talked like one, a spooky man-child demanding more than his fair share of attention.
Rather than admit defeat, I decided to change my goals. I told myself that I'd never really cared about learning the language. My main priority was to get the house in shape. The verbs would come in due time, but until then I needed a comfortable place to hide. — David Sedaris

She regarded her grandchildren as if we were savings bonds, something certain to multiply in value through the majesty of arithmetic. Ya Ya and her husband had produced one child, who in turn had yielded five, a wealth of hearty field hands destined to return to the village, where we might crush olives or stucco windmills or whatever it was they did in her hometown. She was always pushing up our sleeves to examine our muscles, frowning at the sight of our girlish, uncallused hands. — 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

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

At a chain coffee bar in San Francisco, I saw a sign near the cream counter that read NAPKINS COME FROM TREES - CONSERVE! In case you missed the first sign, there was a second one two feet away, reading YOU WASTE NAPKINS - YOU WASTE TREES!!! The cups, of course, are also made of paper, yet there's no mention of the mighty redwood when you order your four-dollar coffee. The guilt applies only to those things that are being given away for free. Were they to charge you ten cents per napkin, they would undoubtedly make them much thinner so you'd need to waste even more in order to fight back the piping hot geyser forever spouting from the little hole conveniently located in the lid of your cup. — 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

True art was based upon despair, and the important thing was to make yourself and those around you as miserable as possible. — 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

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

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

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

If some people are "outed," are other people "inned"? Can we say that someone has been "besided" or "overed"? — David Sedaris

If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever. — 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

Half the people I know have dead animals in their freezers: reptiles, birds, mammals. Is that normal? — 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

What other people call dark and despairing, I call funny. — David Sedaris

She was at a cash register, screaming at a customer. She was, in fact, calling this customer a bitch. I touched her arm and said, "I have to go now." She laid her hand on my shoulder, squeezed it gently, and continued her conversation, saying, "Don't tell the store president I called you a bitch. Tell him I called you a fucking bitch, because that's exactly what you are. Now get out of my sight before I do something we both regret. — David Sedaris

What's strange is, the people who want to be in the position are never asked to be in the position. Like, if you don't want to do something, then people really want you to do it. And the more you say, "No, really, I'm sorry, it's really not for me," the more they want to convince you that it is, in fact, for you, and that you'd be absolutely perfect. — 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

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

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

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 would still be reading out loud. I think that if you are any kind of an artist, then validation is just sort of ... it 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. Eventually I'll retire on some level, eventually no one will want to buy my books or a ticket to see me read, it's inevitable that's going to happe — David Sedaris

The problem isn't gaining weight, it's gaining it in the right place. — 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

Three days after that, the funeral was held, and while riding from the church to the cemetery Ava looked out the widow and noticed that everyone she passed was crying.
"Old people, college students, even the colored men at the gas station
the soul brothers, or whatever we're supposed to call them now."
It was such an outdated term, I just had to use it myself.
"How did the soul brothers know your father?"
"That's just it," she said. "No one told us until after the burial that Kennedy had been shot. It happened when we were in the church, so that's what everyone was so upset about. The president, not my father. — 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

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

No one writes dialect better than Flannery O'Connor. No one should even try. — David Sedaris

For the first twenty years of my life, I rocked myself to sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but eventually, I had to give it up. Throughout the next twenty-two years I lay still and discovered that after a few minutes I could drop off with no problem. Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it's funny how sleep just sort of comes on its own. Often I never even made it to the bed. I'd squat down to pet the cat and wake up on the floor eight hours later, having lost a perfectly good excuse to change my clothes. I'm now told that this is not called "going to sleep" but rather "passing out," a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgment. — 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

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

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

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

Living in a foreign country is one of those things that everyone should try at least once. My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world.
What I find appealing in life abroad was the inevitable sense of helplessness it would inspire. Equally exciting would be the work involved in overcoming that helplessness. There would be a goal involved, and I like having goals. — 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

I'm not a misogynist. I'm a misanthrope. I hate everyone equally. — David Sedaris

I'd think it strange that the boardinghouse attracted both him and me, but that's what cheap places do
draw in people with no money. An apartment of my own was unthinkable at that time of my life, and even if I'd found an affordable one it wouldn't have satisfied my fundamental need to live in a communal past, or what I imagined the past to be like: a world full of antiques. — 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

Say what you will about the south, but in North Carolina a hot dog is free to swing anyway it wishes. — 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

I spent months searching for some secret code before I realized that common sense has nothing to do with it. Hysteria, psychosis, torture, depression: I was told that if something is unpleasant it's probably feminine. This encouraged me, but the theory was blown by such masculine nouns as murder, toothache, and rollerblade. I have no problem learning the words themselves, it's the sexes that trip me up and refuse to stick. — 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

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

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

As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts. — 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

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

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

I think about death all the time, but only in a romantic, self-serving way, beginning, most often, with my tragic illness and ending with my funeral. I see my brother squatting beside my grave, so racked by guilt that he's unable to stand. "If only I'd paid him back that twenty-five thousand dollars I borrowed," he says. I see Hugh, drying his eyes on the sleeve of his suit jacket, then crying even harder when he remembers I bought it for him. — 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

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

I always knew I wanted it to be illustrated. — David Sedaris