Quotes from David Sedaris

A wise man once said that in order to communicate, you have to be able to speak in someone else's language.

September 14, 2001 What killed me, what killed many of us, was the very end: My home sweet home. Because, whatever else Paris might be, this _is not_ our home, it's just the place where we have our jobs or apartments. How could we have forgotten that?

When you're young it's easy to believe that such a opportunity will come again, maybe even a better one.

There was my life before I told a strange woman in a negligee that I was a homosexual, and now there would be my life after, two chapters so dissimilar in style and content that they might have been written by different people.

Teaching you is like having a cesarean section every day of the week.

Why is it some people can manage a thing like a Fitbit, while others go off the rails and allow it to rule, and perhaps even ruin, their lives?

July 3, 1981 Raleigh There is a new cancer that strikes only homosexual men. I heard about it on the radio tonight.

The people I hung out with in my early twenties were middle-class and, at least to our minds, artistic. We'd all turned our backs on privilege, but comfortably, the way you can when you still have access to it.

Shit is the tofu of cursing and can be molded to whichever condition the speaker desires.

I'm often misunderstood at my supermarket in Sussex, not because of my accent but because I tend to deviate from the script. Cashier: Hello, how are you this evening? Me: Has your house ever been burgled? Cashier: What? Me: Your house—has anyone ever broken into it and stolen things? With me, people aren't thinking What did you say? so much as Why are you saying that?

Some people, I thought, opening the wet wipes so I could wash the tumor off my hands before I touched my wallet.

I'm dating myself, but this was before Jesus Christ. We worshiped a God named Sashatiba, who had five eyes, including one on the Adam's apple.

A lot of our outlawed terms were invented by black people and then picked up by whites, who held on to them way past their expiration date. 'My bad,' for example, and 'I've got your back' and 'You go, girlfriend.' They're the verbal equivalents of sitcom grandmothers high-fiving one another, and on hearing them, I wince and feel ashamed of my entire race.

In binghamton, new york, winter meant snow, and though I was young when we left, I was able to recall great heaps of it, and use that memory as evidence that North Carolina was, at best, a third-rate institution. What little snow there was would usually melt an hour or two after hitting the ground, and there you'd be in your windbreaker and unconvincing mittens, forming a lumpy figure made mostly of mud. Snow Negroes, we called them. The

Regardless of whether you voted for him, I thought the president-elect's identity as a despicable human being was something we could all agree on. I mean, he pretty much ran on it.

September 12, 2001 Paris Last night on TV I watched people jump from the windows of the World Trade Center.

One of the things we laughed about was an old episode of The Newlywed Game. The host asked the wives, "What's the most exotic place you've ever made love?" He was likely expecting "The kitchen" or "On a tennis court at night," but one woman didn't quite understand the question and answered, "In the butt.

Bill Gates, who has murdered more innocents than even the Clintons, apparently.

The approach of Christmas signifies three things: bad movies, unforgivable television, and even worse theater. I'm talking bone-crushing theater, the type our ancient ancestors used to oppress their enemies before the invention of the stretching rack.

all had the air of a second home, one devoted to leisure rather than struggle.

This town is the Greek Baltimore.

journal, in my opinion, is a repository of ideas—your brain on the page. A diary, by contrast, is your heart.

Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are "We're number two!

Black female security officer at the Charlotte airport: How you doing, sweetheart? Me: That's so nice of you to call me sweetheart. Her: All right, baby. Keep it safe.