Quotes from David Sedaris

Now it seems cruel, abusive even, but this all happened before the invention of self-esteem, which, frankly, I think is a little overrated.

Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable.

in Japan, if you commit suicide by throwing yourself in front of a train, your family gets fined the equivalent of eighty thousand dollars for all the inconvenience you caused. Of course, if your family was the whole reason you were killing yourself, I suppose it would just be an added incentive.

That all is right with the world. "Man, oh man," he'll say in my memory, lifting his glass and taking us all in, "isn't this just fantastic

While the mini-series based upon novels generate a good deal of interest, it's these real-life dramas that tend to draw a larger audience. Why? I chalk it up to five simple words we use in every print or televised promotion. Five words: "Based Upon a True Story." Not made up in the mind of some typist, but true. Some say that truth is stranger than fiction

It doesn't mean that you've fallen out with the person you used to be closest to but that you've merged into someone else's lane, or had him or her merge into yours.

You'd think my mother could have seen the difference between the sunny, likable her and the dark one who'd call late at night. I could hear the ice cubes in her glass rushing forth whenever she took a sip. In my youth, when she'd join my father for a drink after work—"Just one, I have to get dinner on the table"—that was a happy sound. Now it was like a trigger being cocked.

But he didn't used to be this nice and agreeable, I complained to Hugh. Well, he is now, he said. Why can't you let people change?

So, how was your flight? This, as if there are interesting variations and you might answer, The live orchestra was a nice touch, or The first half was great, but then they let a baby take over the controls and it got all bumpy.

She regarded her grandchildren as if we were savings bonds, something certain to multiply in value through the majesty of arithmetic. Ya Ya and her husband had produced one child, who in turn had yielded five, a wealth of hearty field hands destined to return to the village, where we might crush olives or stucco windmills or whatever it was they did in her hometown. She was always pushing up our sleeves to examine our muscles, frowning at the sight of our girlish, uncallused hands.

I wouldn't know it until months later, but my father had kicked me out of the house not because I was a bum but because I was gay.

That was effortless, the topics springing from nowhere, and we'd move from one to the next in a way that made me think of a monkey gracefully swinging through the branches of a tree.

Whereas our other grandparents asked what grade we were in or which was our favorite ashtray, Ya Ya never expressed any interest in that sort of thing. Childhood was something you endured until you were old enough to work, and money was the only thing that mattered.

I'm the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of people I've never even met.

Every time I see him could be the last, and the pressure I feel to make our conversation meaningful paralyzes me.

In my house, our parents put us to bed with two simple words: "Shut up." That was always the last thing we heard before our lights were turned off. Our artwork did not hang on the refrigerator or anywhere near it, because our parents recognized it for what it was: crap. They did not live in a child's house, we lived in theirs.

We're like a pair of bad trapeze artists, reaching for each other's hands and missing every time. Meanwhile the stage crew has gathered below us and begun to roll up the safety net.

Lisa and I groaned, cursing our stupidity. Once again we'd been duped. There was nothing worse than spending an afternoon on a golf course. We knew what was in store for us and understood that the next few hours would pass like days or maybe even weeks. Our watches would yawn, the minute and hour hands joining each other in a series of periodic naps.

Then he wrestled me to the floor, grabbed my hand, and forced it deep into what amounted to my family's asshole.

Who does this—goes to the shows of people they're supposed to be proud of and counts the empty seats?

Seeing the pros in person was no more interesting than eating an ice-cold hamburger

I insist that Carol eat in my presence for the same reason I wait for the coffee shop employee to turn back in my direction before putting a tip in his basket. I want to be acknowledged as a generous provider. This is about me, not them.

Every clue was italicized with a burst of surging trumpets, and under questioning, the suspects snapped like toothpicks, buckling in less time than it took to soft-boil an egg.

Now here we were, the shadows lengthening, our spaghetti growing cold, as he hit the half-hundred mark, then blithely sailed beyond it. Whore.