Sedaris Family Quotes & Sayings

Labels don't mean much to me one way or another
except when they close the minds of potential readers. I'd much rather we do away with genres and simply file everything under fiction. I know it can work
one of my favourite record stores (Waterloo Music in Austin) simply files everything alphabetically and no one seems to have much problem finding what they're looking for. — Charles De Lint

I wasn't a cliquey person, and I think that's because I came from a large family. I got along with everybody, and I usually got along with the people that people didn't like. — Amy Sedaris

Water from clay pipes is much more wholesome than that which is conducted through lead pipes, because lead is found to be harmful for the reason that white lead is derived from it, and this is said to be hurtful to the human system. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

I'm not a good storyteller. I always think I'm going to get interrupted, or something's going to get edited. I think that comes from being in a large family, so you have to get your story in really quick or someone cuts you off. — Amy Sedaris

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

It is necessary for you to meditate and God will bless you abundantly — Sunday Adelaja

One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work. — David Sedaris

Fear is the killer of fascinating change. — Debasish Mridha

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

As I searched the atlas for somewhere to run to, Hugh made a case for his old stomping grounds. His first suggestion was Beirut, where he went to nursery school. His family left there in the midsixties and moved to the Congo. After that, it was Ethiopia, and then Somalia, all fine places in his opinion.
'Let's save Africa and the Middle East for when I decide to quit living,' I said. — David Sedaris

I've often lost faith in myself, I've never lost it in my family — David Sedaris

We're not unique in our family. We're more ambitious but we're not special. I'm not funnier than anyone else in my family; it's just that we wanted more than Raleigh, North Carolina, had to offer. If my brother wanted more than Raleigh had to offer, you would know his name. My sister Lisa has a really unique and different voice, but she doesn't want that. She's a fine writer, but never said, "I want a book. I want that kind of attention." — David Sedaris

She's afraid to tell me anything important, knowing I'll only turn around and write about it. In my mind, I'm like a friendly junkman, building things from the little pieces of scrap I find here and there, but my family's started to see things differently. Their personal lives are the so-called pieces of scrap I so casually pick up, and they're sick of it. More and more often their stories begin with the line "You have to swear you'll never repeat this." I always promise, but it's generally understood that my word means nothing. — David Sedaris

The difference between writing where you know where to draw the line and writing where you're being way too mean is whether you can tell that the writer is not talking to family or friends anymore. Generally, if you say something bad about somebody on stage, you need to say two bad things about yourself. A lot of times, I think I'm the worst person in the room. — David Sedaris

I know he was desperate. That makes people do all kinds of crazy things. — Suzanne Collins

She had that strange mutant beauty that models have. It's the kind of beauty that no matter what they are wearing or how they try to hide themselves, a sharply defined, electric appeal comes through and zaps your desire. — Marc Maron

Lately, I've been getting too much attention with the Met Gala and work going so well that I try to find rejection in my day. I'll seek out someone on the street or at the farmers' market and ask for something where I know they'll say no. No one likes rejection, but it's real. And I don't want to lose that feeling. — Brie Larson

Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications. — Raymond Carver

In order to get the things I want, it helps me to pretend I'm a figure in a daytime drama, a schemer. Soap opera characters make emphatic pronouncements. They ball up their fists and state their goals out loud. 'I will destroy Buchanan Enterprises,' they say. 'Phoebe Wallingford will pay for what she's done to our family.' Walking home with the back half of the twelve-foot ladder, I turned to look in the direction of Hugh's loft. 'You will be mine,' I commanded. — 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 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

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

There are a lot of college writing textbooks that will include essays and short stories, and after reading the story or essay, there will be questions such as "Have YOU Had any experience with a pedophile in YOUR family?" or "When was the last time you saw YOUR mother drunk?" and they're just really good at prompting stories. You answer the question, and sometimes that can spring into a story. — David Sedaris

For as long as I can remember, my father saved. He saves money, he saves disfigured sticks that resemble disfigured celebrities, and most of all, he saves food. Cherry tomatoes, sausage biscuits, the olives plucked from other people's martinis
he hides these things in strange places until they are rotten. And then he eats them. — 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

I have consciously sought after those things which make for value, order, richness, spirit and wonder, even though I am often unable to verbalize what I feel when I perceive something beautiful. Sometimes it's a pang or a sensation; at other times it is an awareness of joy and security or pure pleasure. In any event, it is a moment to be celebrated. Beauty justifies itself. The fact that it is beyond definition means nothing. — Luci Swindoll

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

My mother was, for the most part, delighted with my brother and regarded him with the bemused curiosity of a brood hen discovering she has hatched a completely different species. 'I think it was very nice of Paul to give me this vase,' she once said, arranging a bouquet of wildflowers into the skull-shaped bong my brother had left on the kitchen table. 'It's nontraditional, but that's the Rooster's way. He's a free spirit, and we're lucky to have him. — David Sedaris

I like to think that the colors and sounds and words have nothing to do with him, that they're all me and my own brilliant, complicated, buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, godlike brain" -Finch — Jennifer Niven

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

A dictator decrees," she later wrote, "a president asks Congress for permission to organize. — Denise Kiernan

Without books, the world will be void. — Lailah Gifty Akita

When I was seven years old, my family moved to North Carolina. When he was seven years old, Hugh's family moved to the Congo. We had a collie and a house cat. They had a monkey and two horses named Charlie Brown and Satan. I threw stones at stop signs. Hugh threw stones at crocodiles. The verbs are the same, but he definitely wins the prize when it comes to nouns and objects. — 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

My family isn't really all that different from anyone else's. Well, maybe they're a bit more entertaining. — David Sedaris

Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake. — Nancy Pearcey

Anybody tells you that money is the root of all evil doesn't have any. — Ben Affleck

When we realize we can stop being Jesus defenders, we can start being Jesus representatives . — Jen Hatmaker