David Sedaris Quotes
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This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable.
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There are certain people in my life who didn't care to be in my book. And so I cut them out. And I had broken up with somebody. And I was, you know, really upset and depressed. And so that was, you know, reasons to keep going.
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I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration.
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Do I exaggerate? Boy, do I, and I'd do it more if I could get away with it.
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I went from having 50 listeners to 50 million listeners.
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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.
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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.
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I don't like travelling if I know I have to write about it.
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As a foreigner in London, I like that there are so many other foreigners.
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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.
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I'm not afraid to write about madness. I always figure that whatever most embarrasses you is something that everyone can relate to, really...because we're just not that different. So if you think, 'Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. I can't possibly talk about that,' and you write about it, the audience is gonna be like, 'that happened to me!
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Snowball just leads elves on, elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game.
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Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.
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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.
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At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.
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I always knew I wanted it to be illustrated.
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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.
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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.
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Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.
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In Paris you're always surrounded by French people.
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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.
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To spend your days in the company of naked men - that was the life for me. 'Turn a bit to the left, Jean-Claude. I long to capture the playful quality of your buttocks.
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I like the trail that the Internet created. For example, I was watching one of those Douglas Sirk movies, and I noticed that Rock Hudson towered over everyone, and I typed in "How tall was" and I saw "How tall was Jesus," and I'm like, "Sure," and half an hour later you're somewhere you didn't expect to be. It doesn't work that same way in books, does it? Even if you have an encyclopedia, the trail isn't that crazy. I like that aspect of it.
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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.
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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.
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Sometimes with 'The New Yorker,' they have grammar rules that just don't feel right in my mouth.
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A history of listening to Top 40 radio had left me with a ridiculous and clichéd notion of love. I had never entertained the feeling myself but knew that it meant never having to say you're sorry. It was a many-splendored thing. Love was a rose and a hammer. Both blind and all-seeing, it made the world go round.
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I go to the movies at least five times a week, and after a while everything becomes a blur to me.
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When forced to leave my house for an extended period of time, I take my typewriter with me, and together we endure the wretchedness of passing through the X-ray scanner. The laptops roll merrily down the belt, while I’m instructed to stand aside and open my bag. To me it seems like a normal enough thing to be carrying, but the typewriter’s declining popularity arouses suspicion and I wind up eliciting the sort of reaction one might expect when traveling with a cannon. It’s a typewriter,’ I say. ‘You use it to write angry letters to airport security.
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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.
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