Quotes from David Sedaris

My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world.

If some people are "outed," are other people "inned"? Can we say that someone has been "besided" or "overed"?

The thing about sports, at least for guys, is that nobody ever defines the rules, not even in gym class. Asking what a penalty means is like asking who Jesus was. It's one of those things you're just supposed to know, and if you don't, there's something seriously wrong with you.

I think there is a difference between comic essays and war reporting, and people can tell that.

living in a foreign country is one of those things that everyone should try at least once. My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world.

Most of my ribbons were for good sportsmanship, a backhanded compliment if ever there was one.

The part of my plan that made old people uncomfortable, that exposed them for the bigots they were—and on a Sunday!—still appealed to me.

If you were to throw a lipoma to a dog, he'd swallow it in a single bite, then get that very particular look on his face that translates to Fuck. Was that a tumor? There'd be something to see. Turtles, on the other hand, never change expression and live with fewer regrets

It was like watching someone you hate getting mugged: three seconds of hard-core violence, and when it was over you just wanted it to happen again.

Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before going to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming tonight along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you into a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared.

Yesterday a woman had her son pee into a cup, which of course tipped over. "That's fine," I said, "but Santa's also going to need a stool sample.

Love seemed all the sweeter when it was misunderstood, condemned by the outside world.

My confessions did nothing to alter this situation, but for the first time in my life I felt that somebody actually knew me. Three somebodies, to be exact. Two were roaming the highway in a Cadillac, doing God knows what with a CB radio, but the other was as close to me as my own skin, and I could now feel the undiluted pleasure of her company.

All I can say is that if it helps to have friends, it helps even more to have friends who are governors!

Missing a nose. With these children Santa has to be careful not to ask, And what would you like for Christmas?

Sex is what you boast about when you have no exterior signs of wealth. It's a way of saying, Look, I might not own a fancy sport coat, or even a carry-on bag, but I do have two women and all the intercourse I can handle

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. No one wanted to call home asking for money, but we all knew that in a pinch our parents would come through for us.

No surprises, no practical jokes, nothing unexpected, but a parent can't control everything, and there's a world of backfiring cars and their human equivalents.

You look like some cousin of mine." The latter would work only if you were Asian, but even then it's a little creepy, the implication being "the cousin I have always wanted to undress and ejaculate on.

For that's all Gatorade ever tastes like—its color. Over the period that I had my stomach virus, I tried them all: blue, red, green, yellow, orange, and a new opaque one that tasted opaque.

Like prisoners and shepherds, many of them didn't care who they had sex with, the idea being that what happens in the dark stays in the dark. It's the next morning you have to worry about—the name-calling, the slamming of doors, the charge that you somehow cast a spell.

weeks passed, my suitcase grew more and more conventional. "I've got something for you," I'd say to a teenager. "It's nothing huge

The problem isn't gaining weight, it's gaining it in the right place.

Ebola, not the thousands who had died of it in Africa but the single person who had it in Dallas.