Quotes from David Sedaris

Then there are vegans, macrobiotics, and a new group, flexitarians, who eat meat if not too many people are watching.

And I'm here to tell you that, as long as you keep your eyes shut, it's really not that bad.

Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it's funny how sleep sort of just comes.

I said that Santa no longer traffics in coal. Instead, if you're bad he comes to your house and steals things.

It's not that I don't have opinions about these things. I just don't feel they're in any way special. Sure, I follow the news. I read the papers and listen to the radio, but I'm not privy to any inside information. When it comes to politics, all I can offer is emotion. My perspective might be slightly different, but so is anyone's when they live overseas.

It's nothing I'd want for myself, but I suppose it's fine for those who prefer food and family to things of real value.

A Dutch parent has a decidedly hairier story to relate, telling his children, "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.

North Carolina is temperate and populated with well-meaning people; therefore I will engage in oral sex with another man.

Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window.

Time is cruel to everything but seems to have singled out eyeglasses for special punishment. What looks good now is guaranteed to embarrass you twenty years down the line, which is, of course, the whole problem with fashion.

Not giving is no different than taking.

The Romanians really do lead the world when it comes to cursing. "What have you got for me?" I asked a woman from Transylvania who was now living in Vienna. "Shove your hand up my ass and jerk off my shit," she offered.

This is where my mom and dad were the night Martin Luther King was assassinated," I said to Hugh after we had ordered. "Not here at the airport, obviously, but at their original location downtown." I told him how someone had stepped out of the kitchen to announce the news, and how everyone but my parents had applauded. "Our family hadn't been in the South very long, and that was a real eye-opener.

I noticed my mother's face assume an expression she reserved for unspeakable horror. I had seen this look only twice before: once when she was caught in the path of a charging, rabid pig and then again when I told her I wanted a peach-colored velveteen blazer with matching slacks.

Nobody likes having a problem, but having a convoluted, bureaucratic one is even more galling.

Dad said that the guy who can play guitar is going to be the life of the party. He's confusing life with death.

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.

Having spent my life trying to fit the will of others, I was unable to distinguish between what I enjoyed and what I thought I should enjoy.

It's common to be misread by people who don't know you.

I'm not a parent myself, but I think the best solution at this point is to slap that child across the face. It won't stop crying, but at least now it'll be doing it for a good reason.

You're not supposed to talk about your good deeds, I know. It effectively negates them and in the process makes people hate you. If there's a disaster, for instance, and someone tells me he donated five thousand dollars to the relief effort—this while I gave a lesser amount, or nothing at all—I don't think, Goodness, how bighearted you are, but, rather, Fuck you for making me look selfish.

The two of you grew apart,' my mother would say. She made it sound as if we'd veered off in different directions, though in fact we had the exact same destination. I just never made it.

While the builders worked on the cottage, Hugh lived in what used to be the stable but was later converted into a guesthouse, the kind you'd have if you wanted to either discourage guests or contain them in one spot while slowly depressing them to death.

That said, I admire people who are curious and open their minds to new possibilities, especially after a certain age. You have to draw the line somewhere, though, and with me it's my anus.