David Sedaris Quotes

It's astonishing the amount of time that certain straight people devote to gay sex - trying to deter...

The houses looked like something a child might draw, a row of shaky squares with triangles on top. A...

Oh, for Christ's sake,' I hear. 'Can we please just try to have a good time?' This is like ordering ...

A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more ...

Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, th...

My confessions did nothing to alter this situation, but for the first time in my life I felt that so...

One year I went as a pirate, but from then on I went as a hobo. It's a word you don't hear anymore. ...

I hoped our lives would continue this way forever, but inevitably the past came knocking. Not the go...

I don’t know why it was, exactly, but nothing irritated my father quite like the sound of his childr...

I'm dating myself, but this was before Jesus Christ. We worshiped a God named Sashatiba, who had fiv...

Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Drac...

Cover your glass in France or Germany --even worse, in England - and in the voice of someone who has...

In Paris the cashiers sit rather than stand. They run your goods over a scanner, tally up the price,...

Sometimes the sins you haven't committed are all you have left to hold onto.

The landscape is best described as 'pedestrian hostile.' It's pointless to try to take a walk, so I ...

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

I'd think it strange that the boardinghouse attracted both him and me, but that's what cheap places ...

It's safe to assume that by 2085 guns will be sold in vending machines but you won't be able to smok...

Randall, the gay alcoholic in the house next door, boldly peeps through my windows. 'Boy, you sure r...

I realized I was a teacher when I felt warm during class and got up to open the door. Later on there...

Adrienne started teaching a few months ago in Denver and wrote that it leaves you with a constant fe...

between the disfigurement and the muzzle, it's nearly impossible to catch what she's saying. Always,...

He has a passport," my classmates would whisper. "Quick, let's run before he judges us!

The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing some...

I would later discover it was a bad idea to gather more than two of these people in an enclosed area...

We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of phys...

Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading th...

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

Hugh consoled me, saying, "Don't let it get to you. There are plenty of things you're good at."When ...

I hate you' she said to me one afternoon. 'I really, really hate you.' Call me sensitive, but I coul...

After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I d...

Certain motherfuckers think they can fuck with my shit, but you can't kill the Rooster. You might ca...

At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loade...

The word phobic has its place when properly used, but lately it's been declawed by the pompous insis...

For as long as I can remember, my father saved. He saves money, he saves disfigured sticks that rese...

If some people are “outed,” are other people “inned”? Can we say that someone has been “besided” or ...

People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than ...

Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an und...

When asked "What do we need to learn this for?" any high-school teacher can confidently answer that,...

My mother was, for the most part, delighted with my brother and regarded him with the bemused curios...

I hate computers. My hatred is entrenched, and I nourish it daily. I’m comfortable with it, and no c...

I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an ...

The woman spoke with a heavy western North Carolina accent, which I used to discredit her authority....

My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepa...

The guilt applies only to those things that are being given away for free.

Across town, over in the East Village, the graffiti was calling for the rich to be eaten, imprisoned...

He die one day, and then he go above of my head to live with your father."He weared the long hair, a...

I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.

The way I saw it, if my students were willing to pretend I was a teacher, the least I could do was r...

In New York I'd go to the movies three or four times a week. Here I've upped it to six or seven, mai...

The walking tour guides one through the city's various landmarks, reciting bits of information the l...

but I have no mind for business and considered staying awake to be enough of an accomplishment.

Back in New York I took full advantage of my status as a native speaker. I ran my mouth to shop cler...

It was generally agreed that a coffin-size studio on Avenue D was preferable to living in one of the...

For the first twenty years of my life, I rocked myself to sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but...

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

The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate.

Faced with an exciting question, science tended to provide the dullest possible answer.

Scream at the mangled leather carcass lying at the foot of the stairs, and my parents would roar wit...

Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

What's the trick to remembering that a sandwich is masculine? What qualities does it share with anyo...

On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From ...

Mr. Mancini had a singular talent for making me uncomfortable. He forced me to consider things I’d r...

If I'm walking down an American street and anyone darker than a peanut shell approaches, I'll say, "...

In Japanese and Italian, the response to ["How are you?"] is "I'm fine, and you?" In German it's ans...

I asked her, dreamily, if we had met, and when she told me that we had not, I gave her a little fing...

...but wasn't everyone in England supposed to be a detective? Wasn't every crime, no matter how comp...

There are things you forget naturally-computer passwords, your father's continuing relationship with...

Nobody likes having a problem, but having a convoluted, bureaucratic one is even more galling.

It bothered me that the bag bothered me more than head did, but what are you going to do? A person d...

Owl love you forever

It’s not lost on me that I’m so busy recording life, I don’t have time to really live it.

It was one of those situations I often find myself in while traveling. Something's said by a strange...

I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking a...

But instead I am applying for a job as an elf. Even worse than applying is the very real possibility...

All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is sa...

The only bright spot in the entire evening was the presence of Kevin "Tubby" Matchwell, the eleven-y...

Low ceiling, stone walls, a dirt floor stamped with paw prints. I never go in without announcing mys...

My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out ...

Hugh and I have been together for so long that in order to arouse extraordinary passion, we need to ...

I attributed their behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV, but television didn't teach you ...

The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I've discovered it can work miracles as lo...

I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn't like it, and changed.

Each one of us is left to choose our own quality of life and take pleasure where we find it with the...

The trouble with aggressive nonsmokers is that they feel they are doing you a favor by not allowing ...

When forced to leave my house for an extended period of time, I take my typewriter with me, and toge...

It's odd the things that people remember. Parents will arrange a birthday party, certain it will sti...

If you read someone else's diary, you get what you deserve.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

On Undecided Voter​s: "To put them in perspective, I think​ of being​ on an airplane.​ The flight at...

It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my ...

A week after my drugs ran out, I left my bed to perform at the college, deciding at the last minute ...

If you are any kind of an artist, then validation … can be a result, but you’re going to do the work...

I'm not a parent myself, but I think the best solution at this point is to slap that child across th...

Look at yourself on the day that you graduated from college, then look at yourself today. I did that...

I'd tried to straighten him out, but there's only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwi...

When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is ...

I like the trail that the Internet created. For example, I was watching one of those Douglas Sirk mo...

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

I'm the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of the people...

I love things made out of animals. It's just so funny to think of someone saying, "I need a letter o...