Quotes from David Sedaris

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 is to convert rather than listen. ... It's not that I don't like her - far from it - I just worry that, without a regular job and the proper linoleum, she'll fall through a crack and disappear to a place where we can't find her.

Use the word "y'all," and before you knew it, you'd find yourself in a haystack French-kissing an underage goat. Along with grits and hush puppies, the abbreviated form of you all was a dangerous step on an insidious path leading straight to the doors of the Baptist church.

never fall asleep in a Dumpster, never underestimate a bee, never drive a convertible behind a flatbed truck, never get old, never get drunk near a train, and never, under any circumstances, cut off your air supply while masturbating.

And he always has a fantastic body, shown at its best on the cross, which—face it—was practically designed to make a man's stomach and shoulders look good.

Other people's pain is uninteresting. My own, though, is spellbinding.

The whole notion of the nursing home was something dreamed up by people like my mother; American women with sunglasses, always searching for their tanning lotion or cigarette lighters.

This is a busy week with me and lunatics, whom I tend to see as either signs or messengers.

Story-telling is pivotal to our well-being, as are nonethnic jokes and riddles.

I wanted to be perfect," he said over dinner. "I…need to be perfect." It's such a burden to place on yourself. Say you are perfect—who's going to recognize it? Few things are like the Olympics, where judges hold up score cards. How does one paint perfectly? Or lawyer perfectly? The key is to fill the space between your skill level and perfection with charm. That said, you can't do it consciously. Charm can't be constructed that way.

If you are any kind of an artist, then validation … can be a result, but you're going to do the work anyway. Because you're just wired that way. It's so engrained, it's such a part of your personality that you don't just stop doing it.

It was the artist's duty to find the appropriate objects, and the audience's job to decipher meaning. If the piece failed to work, it was their fault, not yours.

Following a brief period of hard-won independence she came to appreciate the fact that people aren't foolish as much as they are kind.

Happiness is harder to put into words. It's also harder to source, much more mysterious than anger or sorrow, which come to me promptly, whenever I summon them, and remain long after I've begged them to leave.

Live with liberty, and your imagination can soar.

Making it worse, I had to sit through another endless preview for Titanic. Who do they think is going to see that movie?

On the plane from Paris I heard a man say, "The first thing I'm going to do when I get home is order a Big Gulp. I'm going to supersize everything!" He said he'd been thirsty the entire time he was in Paris, and though I'd never thought about it, if you're used to carrying a trash-can-size cup filled with crushed ice and soda, I suppose it would be hard to spend a few weeks in Europe.

We were standing near the Lollipop Forest when we realized that Santa is an anagram of Satan... Overhearing the customers we would substitute the Satan for the world Santa.

We'd all turn our backs on privilege, but comfortably, the way you can when you still have access to it. No one wanted to call home asking for money, but we all knew that in a pinch our parents would come through for us.

Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you've come to mow its lawns.

In imagining myself as modest, mysterious, and fiercely intelligent, I'm forced to realize that, in real life, I am none of these qualities. Nobody dreams of the things he already has.

Still, there were moments when, against all reason, I thought I might be a genius. These moments were provoked not by any particular accomplishment but by cocaine and crystal methamphetamine — drugs that allow you to lean over a mirror with a straw up your nose, suck up an entire week's paycheck, and think, "God, I'm smart.

She knew what my mother did not: either you want a clean floor or you want to use a mop, but you can't have both.

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.

I explained that he was Chinese, and she asked if the movie would be in Chinese. No, I said, he lives in America. In California. He's been there since he was a baby. Then what does it matter if he's Chinese? Well, I said, he's got... you know, a sensibility.