Quotes from David Sedaris

There are only two places to get robbed: TV and the real world. On television you get your stuff back. In the real world, if you're lucky, the policeman who responds to your call will wonder what kind of computer it was. Don't let this get your hopes up. Chances are he's asking only because he has a software question.

Oh, for Christ's sake," I hear. "Can we please just try to have a good time?" This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn't work. I've tried it.

What brought us together was a love of nature, or, more specifically, of catching things and unintentionally killing them.

The Artist's impressions of a walk in the woods. The Artist's view on viewing. The Artist on Art. How do you get your ideas for stories, Mr. Valentine? Well, I simply exploit everything I come into contact with. One ended, of course, by losing all spontaneity. You saw people as characters, sunsets as an excuse for similes—

We're forever blaming the airline industry for turning us into monsters: it's the fault of the ticket agents, the baggage handlers, the slowpokes at the newsstands and the fast food restaurants. But what if this is who we truly are, and the airport's just a forum that allows us to be our real selves, not just hateful but gloriously so?

Walking home with the back half of the twelve-foot ladder I turned to look in the direction of Hugh's loft. 'You will be mine,' I commanded.

Boxes of records made me think that LPs should be outlawed or at least limited to five per person, and I soon came to despise the type who packs even her empty shampoo bottles, figuring she'll sort things out and throw them away once she's settled into her new place.

Here I've given him a good eight inches and a shot at immortality and he'll turn on me the same way he did last year when I asked him to pose for a few nude sketches. Ingrate

The real life of the party is flattened beneath the bed, taping actual sex encounters, not sitting cross-legged on the floor with a guitar, embarrassing himself and others.

He has a point there, that's harsh. Unfortunately, they never gave him a medal for it and as a result he brings it up time and time again.

In my experience, it was hard to write without your preferred tools, but impossible to write without a cigarette.

Here I am, just turned fifty, and I forgot that my father isn't dead yet!

The position was offered at the last minute, when the scheduled professor found a better-paying job delivering pizza.

Isn't that sweet of my only son to travel all this way so he can whine about his pathetic little friend? Maybe if I weren't strapped to my deathbed I could muster up the strength to give a damn.

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

There are few greater pleasures than feeling proud of someone, of worrying you might burst with it, especially if that someone is related to you and therefore part of your organization. I've always thought of my family that way, as a company. What's good for one of us is good for all of us. Our jobs are to advance the name Sedaris.

I didn't need a fifteen-minute conversation, just some human interaction. It can be had, and easily: a gesture, a joke, something that says, "I live in this world too." I think of it as a switch that turns someone from a profession to a person, and it works both ways. "I'm not just a vehicle for my wallet!" I sometimes want to scream.

What ultimately did me in was the self-adhesive condom. Putting it on was no problem, but its removal qualified as what, in certain cultures, is known as a bris. Wear it once, and you'll need a solid month to fully recover. It will likely be a month in which you'll weigh the relative freedom of peeing in your pants against the unsightly discomfort of a scab-covered penis, ultimately realizing that, in terms of a convenient accessory

By this point it was 2:58, and I was starting to panic, thinking, I guess, that if I didn't give the money away by 3:16, the God I claim not to believe in, the one whose only son was used to sell nails in one of my favorite jokes, was going to smite me.

When shit brings you down, just say 'fuck it,' and eat yourself some motherfucking candy.")

The next summer we went to France for six weeks, and I added another 420 words, most of them found in the popular gossip magazine, 'Voici'. "Man-eater", I'd say. "Gold digger, roustabout, louse". "Who are you talking about?" my neighbors would ask. "What social climber? Where?

And it's bad enough to be caught in your underpants but even worse to be caught in your underpants scratching out a valium prescription on someone else's pad.

Everyone in America is extremely concerned with hydration. Go more than five minutes without drinking, and you'll surely be discovered behind a potted plant, dried out like some escaped hermit crab.

He told me that his sister is clinically depressed and read Naked during a month-long visit to a psychiatric hospital. According to him, once she'd finished, she loaned it to a fellow patient, who, in turn, loaned it to someone else. The book seemed to lift people's spirits, and as a result, the hospital has made it recommended reading. I'm not sure whether I believe this, but it's extremely flattering to think my book is being passed around a German asylum.