David Sedaris Quotations

What other people call dark and despairing, I call funny.

But I don't distinguish between being laughed with, and laughed at. I'll take either.

I go to the movies at least five times a week, and after a while everything becomes a blur to me.

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?'

I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone.

I haven't got 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.

I like listening to books as well, as that way you can iron at the same time.

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?'

Actually I liked that 'Let the Right One In,' that Swedish vampire movie.

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.

I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives.

I guess my guilty pleasure would be listening to the British audio versions of the 'Harry Potter' books.

Do I exaggerate? Boy, do I, and I'd do it more if I could get away with it.

I always think it's a good policy to like the people who like you.

If you read somebody's diary, you get what you deserve.

I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like.

I just enjoy lying on the couch and reading a magazine.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Lovers of audio books learn to live with compromise.

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.

As a foreigner in London, I like that there are so many other foreigners.

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.

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.

But most good movies have a gun in them.

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.

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.

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

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

I don't think my life is more interesting than anybody else's.

I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration.

The only real advice you can give anyone is to keep writing.

There are lots of things that happen to me that I don't write about.

When you read comic material and people aren't laughing how do you know they're listening.

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?

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.

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.

To say that a humorist exaggerates to get big laughs, I don't see how that's big news.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

The humor section is the last place an author wants to be. They put your stuff next to collections of Cathy cartoons.

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.

Because I've always been a fairly nervous person.

But I'm a humorist. I'm not a reporter, I never pretended to be a reporter.

I always knew I wanted it to be illustrated.

I don't like being left to my own thoughts.

I like books on tape, and will listen to just about anything.

I meet people at book signings. My record now, for signing, is ten and a half hours in one sitting.

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

I went from having 50 listeners to 50 million listeners.

I'm not a reporter but the 'New Yorker' treats everyone like a reporter.

Sometimes I say to myself, 'Oh, I wish I could win a Tony Award', although I'm not that bothered.

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.

This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable.

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.

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.

In Paris you're always surrounded by French people.

Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't.

Hugh returned from his trip, and days later I still sounded like a Red Chinese asking questions about the democratic hinterlands. "And you actually saw people smoking in restaurants? Really! And offices, too? Oh, tell me again about the ashtrays in the hospital waiting room, and don't leave anything out."

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.

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.

It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I'd written the story. I hadn't-I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It's in there somewhere-but I have to find it. I'll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on.

The things I've bought from strangers in the dark would curl your hair.

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?

I tend to write things seven times before I show them to my editor. I write them seven times, then I take them on tour, read them like a dozen times on tour, then go back to the room and rewrite, read and rewrite... I would never show him a first draft, because then he's really going to be sick of it by the twelfth draft.

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'.

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.

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.

I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call "understanding" is basically just fantasizing.

As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.

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.

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.

The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain old-fashioned fear.

Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before going to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming tonight along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you into a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared." This was the reward for living in the Netherlands. As a child you get to hear this story, and as an adult you get to turn around and repeat it.

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.

It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters.

I’d always been afraid of sick people, and so had my mother. It wasn’t that we feared catching their brain aneurysm or accidentally ripping out their IV. I think it was their fortitude that frightened us. Sick people reminded us not of what we had, but of what we lacked. Everything we said sounded petty and insignificant; our complaints paled in the face of theirs, and without our complaints, there was nothing to say.

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

Sallie Mae sounds like a naive and barefoot hillbilly girl but in fact they are a ruthless and aggressive conglomeration of bullies located in a tall brick building somewhere in Kansas. I picture it to be the tallest building in that state and I have decided they hire their employees straight out of prison.

She said, “I’m going to have you fired.” I had two people say that to me today, “I’m going to have you fired.” Go ahead, be my guest. I’m wearing a green velvet costume; it doesn’t get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are? I’m going to have you fired!” and I wanted to lean over and say, “I’m going to have you killed.

I attributed their behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV, but television didn't teach you everything. Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable. This was one of the things you were supposed to learn simply by being alive, and it angered me that the Tomkeys did not understand it.

whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like.

In New York I'd go to the movies three or four times a week. Here I've upped it to six or seven, mainly because I'm too lazy to do anything else. Fortunately, going to the movies seems to suddenly qualify as an intellectual accomplishment, on a par with reading a book or devoting time to serious thought. It's not that the movies have gotten any more strenuous, it's just that a lot of people are as lazy as I am, and together we've agreed to lower the bar.

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.

I am a person who feels guilty for crimes I have not committed, or have not committed in years. The police search the train station for a serial rapist and I cover my face with a newspaper, wondering if maybe I did it in my sleep. The last thing I stole was an eight-track tape, but to this day I'm unable to enter a store without feeling like a shoplifter. It's all the anxiety with none of the free stuff.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely.

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.

If I were president, I would turn the tables and allow the fetus to abort its mother.

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.

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.

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.

I've been keeping diaries for 27 years.

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.