Quotes from David Sedaris

Were it not for Sorry! I'd never have known that Kathy's mother shot a kitten in the head.

Greeks are just Jews without money.

One of the people I voted for this morning was named Lee Botts. Her campaign slogan is HER BOTTOM LINE IS CLEAN WATER. Someone tampered with the sign she had in front of the school, and now it reads LEE BOTTS. HER BOTTOM IS CLEAN.

Look," I'll say to Jesus, "enough is enough. I suggest we nail some boards together and have ourselves an old-fashioned crucifixion.

June 3, 1987 Chicago This afternoon I found a $50 bill in the foyer of the building near the mailboxes. It was folded thin and full of cocaine. Some of it spilled when I opened it up, but there's still plenty left. So that's $50 in cash and around $80 worth of cocaine—$130! If I find $50 every day, I won't need to get a job.

I sat him down the other night and explained as gently as possible that I do not care about ice-skating. I do not care about Michelle Kwan or Tara Lipinski and would be happy if I never hear the words triple lutz or double axel again. I told him that on Friday and walked into the kitchen an hour later to find him in tears. "It's heartbreaking," he said, watching his beloved skaters.

July 7, 1995 New York Someone stopped Mitch on the street last night and said, "I need another seventy-five cents so I can buy a cheeseburger. How about helping me?" Mitch said, "Get it without the cheese," and continued walking

I don't think of myself as overly prissy, but it bothered me to find a finger on my bedroom floor.

Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.

I wanted it, I wanted it, I wanted it, but the moment it was mine, it ceased to interest me.

Trying to explain moral principles to Khe Sahn was like reviewing a standard 1040 tax form with a house cat!

What she thought about while looking at the waves was a complete mystery, yet you could tell that these thoughts pleased her, and that she liked herself better while thinking them.

The guilt applies only to those things that are being given away for free.

I should be used to the way Americans dress when traveling, yet it still manages to amaze me. It's as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge saying, "Fuck this. I'm going to Los Angeles!" On

Hugh claims the reason I've never seen one is that I'm not perceptive enough. This is his way of telling me that I'm self-centered, suggesting that if I weren't so concerned about, for example, meeting my daily Fitbit goal, I'd realize there's a six-hundred-year-old milkmaid living in our silverware drawer.

Her people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready — so who was she to advise me on anything?

For my fifty dollars, I want to leave the doctor's office in tears, but instead I walk out feeling like a hypochondriac, which is one of the few things I'm actually not.

Perhaps I worried that if I didn't wander off, my family would get on my nerves, or—far more likely—I would get on theirs, and that our week together wouldn't be as ideal as I'd told myself it would be.

She's getting these records from some kid down the block. I've seen him around a few times on the street barefoot and shirtless but with a big hairbrush sticking out of his gym shorts. He's not going anyplace barefoot so what does he need with a hairbrush? He's just begging to step on a nail or on some of the broken glass I've set outside Dawn's window and I can't wait until he does.

I need to touch the person's head again. Experience has taught me that you can do this three times before the head's owner either yells at you or rings for the flight attendant.

You people are...assholes! I mean, what the hell, you can't even applaud for your own teenagers? I'd meant to but figured the team was back in coach.

them. "You said it was how big?

or unsafe sex with strangers?

I've always like to think that before killing myself I'd take the time to really mess with people. By this I mean that I'd leave them things, and write letters, nice ones, apologizing for my actions and reassuring them that there was nothing they could have said or done to change my mind.