David Sedaris Quotes

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

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.

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

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

Given enough time, I guess anything can look good. All it has to do is survive.

They were Jesuits," she told me. "That means they believe in God but not in terlet paper. You should have seen their underwear. Disgusting.

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

In books and movies infidelity always looks so compelling, so right. Here are people who defy petty convention and are rewarded with only the tastiest bits of human experience.

Art isn't about following the rules. It's about breaking them.

You know, when you need drugs and you don't have a lot of money, what you'll do is you'll hang out with people who will give you drugs. Right?

The word 'phobic' has its place when properly used, but lately it's been declawed by the pompous insistence that most animosity is based upon fear rather than loathing.

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.

..she took pictures of germs, viruses, and people reacting to germs and viruses. On weekends, for extra money, she photographed weddings, which really wasn't that much of a stretch

The Korean man nodded, the way you do when you’re a foreigner and understand that someone has finished a sentence.

And when Hugh would grow progressively Gandhi on me, I'd remind him that these were pests---disease carriers who feasted upon the dead and then came indoors to dance upon our silverware.

Nobody pours stuffing like you do, my friend.

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

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

I didn't know about the rest of the class, but when Bastille Day eventually rolled around, I planned to stay home and clean my oven.

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

I sometimes read books on my iPad.

There is still the outside world to contend with. A world of backfiring cars, and their human equivalents.

Perhaps the little Negro girl was holding a concealed razor blade. Maybe she was one of the troublemakers out for a fresh white scalp.

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

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

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

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.

When they're born outside, crows come and pluck their eyes out.

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.

Every so often my life will feel like a story. It doesn't have to be a big thing; in fact, most often, it's just the opposite.

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

The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I've discovered it can work miracles as long as you keep telling yourself, "I want to love, I want to live.

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

I needed to temper (my dad's) enthusiasm a bit (about attending Princeton), and so I announced that I would be majoring in patricide...My mom was actually jealous.

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

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

...clatter of a typwriter suggests that you're actually building something.

I see you that have a little swimming mouse

My feet are completely flat, but for most of my life they were still shaped like feet. Now, thanks to bunions, they're shaped more like states, wide boring ones that nobody wants to drive through.

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

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

At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.

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.

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

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?'

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

Maybe one day, I would write a story about arguing in public, and those would come in handy in some way.

Thank god I'm in England, because if I lived in any other country, it'd probably be the Philippines. Because with Rodrigo Duterte as the leader they couldn't really give me attitude on Donald Trump.

I spend so much time like living in the past or the future. I mean, I think most people do, really. And the moments when you're really present in your life can be pretty rare, really.

A lot of people don't know what they want, you know, or they're just kind of vague about it.