Quotes from David Sedaris

Last year a woman decided she wanted a picture of her cat sitting on Santa's lap, so she smuggled it into Macy's in a duffel bag. The cat sat on Santa's lap for five seconds before it shot out the door, and it took six elves forty-five minutes before they found it in the kitchen of the employee cafeteria.

She lit a cigarette and spent a moment identifying with the smoldering match.

Sallie Mae sounds like a naive and barefoot hillbilly girl but in fact they are a ruthless and aggressive conglomeration of bullies located in a tall brick building somewhere in Kansas. I picture it to be the tallest building in that state and I have decided they hire their employees straight out of prison. It scares me.

They're pictures you take of yourself with a phone and send to the people you no longer communicate with by talking.

You can't just march into someone else's country and start telling everyone what to do—even the Marines have to practice a little diplomacy. May

We were very crowded today and I got a kick out of completing the transaction, handing the customer a receipt, and saying, "Your photos will be mailed on August tenth.

If you're looking for sympathy you can find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.

Hugh and I returned to Normandy the following summer, and I resumed my identity as the village idiot. "See you again yesterday!" I said to the butcher. "Ashtray! Bottleneck!

Increasingly at Southern airports, instead of a "good-bye" or "thank-you," cashiers are apt to say, "Have a blessed day." This can make you feel like you've been sprayed

Was it with a clear mind that she believed in us, or was it just the booze talking?

Since receiving my last phone bill I have taken to fastening the telephone to its cradle, using some of the threaded packing tape stolen from what used to be my job. In the rare event of an incoming daytime call I can always grab a knife or scissors, but luckily the task appears to be too strenuous during my ever increasing personal mystery hours. Another problem solved with simplicity and grace.

Then there's all his disease prevention, the things that supposedly stave it off but that the drug companies don't want you knowing about.

My sister is not dating anyone–a good thing, as she's got way too much time on her hands. And that, I think, is the number one reason so many relationships fail. Too much free time, and too much time together. (P. 157)

My job, always, was to hand him tools as he called for them and to hold the worklight, a bare bulb in an aluminum cage. It might have been different had I cared what a piston was, or were I interested in the proper consistency of cement. As it was, I never asked, and he never offered. Rather, I'd just stand there, my arm outstretched like a lawn jockey's.

If finding an apartment is like falling in love, buying one is like proposing on your first date and agreeing not to see each other until the wedding.

A concept as uninviting as a shampoo cocktail.

An elf in SantaLand is one thing, an elf in Sportswear is something else altogether.

I checked The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories out of the library. One of the entries in it is titled "The Day I Sat with Jesus on the Sundeck and a Wind Came Up and Blew My Kimono Open and He Saw My Breasts.

Since when is the government coming for anyone's guns in this country?" I asked. "I mean, honestly, can't any of us enter a Walmart right now and walk out with a Sidewinder missile?

Out in the world where it's so beautiful and complex and painful that sometimes you just need to sit down and write about it.

I used to get them all the time. Then I met a woman who told me I needed to put a bar of soap in my bed. I don't know why it works, but it does!

Today the teacher told us that a ripe Camembert should have the same consistency as a human eyebrow.

Pretty much everything that isn't terrible is awesome in America now.

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.