Quotes from David Sedaris

Look at yourself on the day that you graduated from college, then look at yourself today. I did that recently and it was like, 'Yikes! What the hell happened?

She hit bottom when she physically attacked a deaf-mute. This was a boy of fourteen, a beloved neighborhood figure who delivered for the nearby deli.

It bothered me that the bag bothered me more than head did, but what are you going to do? A person doesn't conciously choose what he focuses on. Those things choose you, and, once they do, nothing, it seems, can shake them.

between the disfigurement and the muzzle, it's nearly impossible to catch what she's saying. Always, though, while tripping and stumbling to the music, she looks out into her audience and tells the story about her mother. Most people laugh and yell for her to lift her skirts, but every so often she'll spot someone weeping and swear they can understand her every word.

In my book, if you want to be treated like an old person, you have to look like one. That means no face-lift, no blond hair, and definitely no fishnet stockings.

If you read an essay in Esquire and don't like it, there could be something wrong with the essay. If it's in The New Yorker, on the other hand, and you don't like it, there's something wrong with you.

But songbirds are trash, the chicken said, and the guinea hen laughed, saying, Well, then, I guess we could all use a little more trash in our lives.

Neither of them had ever picked up a pen in their life, but all of a sudden they're poets, right, like that's all it takes—being in love.

Half the people I know have dead animals in their freezers: reptiles, birds, mammals. Is that normal?

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. Peg understood that at a relatively early age. Me, it took years.

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

I cried for it all and wondered why so few songs were written about cats.

I felt betrayed, the way you do when you discover that your cat has a secret secondary life and is being fed by neighbors who call him something stupid like Calypso.

You're the man now,' she said to me after my father died, 'you're the man.' Then she turned to Popeye, our calico tom, and said, 'You're the cat now, Popeye, you're the cat,' as if she'd always worn a veil over her face and had never known we were men and cats all along.

Another thing I love about the beach is sitting in the sun, mainly for the lazy kind of talk it generates. A person can say anything with lotion on, and I'm more than willing to listen.

For the first time in memory, I was unable to sleep not because I was anxious but because I was excited. To live in a damp crowded asshole and sing--if these guys don't know the secret to living, I don't know who does. (The Grieving Owl, page 157)

The houses looked like something a child might draw, a row of shaky squares with triangles on top. Add a door, add two windows. Think of putting a tree in the front yard, and then decide against it because branches aren't worth the trouble.

What are you doing?' Hugh moaned as I stepped out of the dressing room. 'That's three pairs of culottes you'll own now.' All I could say in my defense was 'Maybe I have a busy life.

As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts. By this I meant that I would stop living in a fantasy world; that, while standing in line for a hamburger or my shot at the ATM, I would not daydream about befriending a gorilla or inventing a pill that would make hair waterproof.

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.

I'd think it strange that the boardinghouse attracted both him and me, but that's what cheap places do -- draw in people with no money. An apartment of my own was unthinkable at that time of my life, and even if I'd found an affordable one it wouldn't have satisfied my fundamental need to live in a communal past, or what I imagined the past to be like: a world full of antiques.

I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed silence in an American theater. It's easy to believe that our audiences spend the day saying nothing, actually saving their voices for the moment the picture begins.

Low ceiling, stone walls, a dirt floor stamped with paw prints. I never go in without announcing myself. 'Hyaa!' I yell. 'Hyaa. Hyaa!' It's the sound my father makes when entering his toolshed, the cry of cowboys as they round up dogies, and it suggests a certain degree of authority. Snakes, bats, weasels --it's time to head up and move on out.

Good girl, Rachel. Now, let's get the hell out of here. Your mother has a headache that won't quit until you're twenty-one