Quotes from David Sedaris

Don't go to the hardware store for milk.

September 25, 2007 Paris To honor the death of Marcel Marceau I observed a minute of silence.

awesome," which has replaced "incredible," "good," and even "just OK." Pretty much everything that isn't terrible is awesome in America now.

You're afraid of moths?" He nodded yes and winced a little. "But nobody's afraid of moths." "I am," he whispered, and he looked behind us, as if afraid that one might be listening.

There's an Allan Gurganus quote I think of quite often: "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." Is there a richer or more complex story than that?

I'll do the snails on cinnamon toast.

As my ticket is ripped I'll briefly consider all the constructive things I could be doing. I think of the parks and the restaurants, of the pleasantries I'll never use on the friends I am failing to make. I think of the great city teeming on the other side of that curtain, and then the lights go down, and I love Paris.

It's so hard to predict which friends will last and which will fade away. Quite often I'd move and lose half the contacts in my address book, people I thought would be with me forever. It's not that we outgrew one another. They just couldn't be bothered to put a stamp on a letter. Or I couldn't. Of course it's easier now with email.

I told myself that if I looked at my brother differently, it was because of the suit, nto the weight. He was a grown man now. He was going to get married, and therefore, he was a changed person. He took a sip of my father's weak coffee and spit it back into the mug. This shit's like making love in a canoe. Excuse me? It's fucking near water. Then again, I thought, maybe it is just the weight.

I told myself that if I looked at my brother differently, it was because of the suit, not the weight. He was a grown man now. He was going to get married, and therefore, he was a changed person. He took a sip of my father's weak coffee and spit it back into the mug. This shit's like making love in a canoe. Excuse me? It's fucking near water. Then again, I thought, maybe it is just the weight.

We're not a horrible couple, but we have our share of fights, the type that can start with a misplaced sock and suddenly be about everything. "I haven't liked you since 2002," he hissed during a recent argument over which airport security line was moving the fastest. This didn't hurt me so much as confuse me. "What happened in 2002?" I asked.

You hear this a lot in America, especially when you're complaining about televisions, or loud music, or, more common still, television and loud music together in the same room. "People like it." "Yes," I always want to say, "but they're the wrong people.

If he thinks we're bad, he should spend more time with Lisa." "That's true," I agreed. "Lisa's the master. I left her at a Starbucks for ninety seconds last year, and when I returned the woman behind the counter was saying to her, 'My gynecologist told me that exact same thing.

could it be???? Timothy Speaks, who had so many pierced holes in his ears you could have torn the lobe right off, effortlessly ripped it loose the same way you might separate a stamp from a sheet.

I refuse to support the poltergeist industry, so would sooner sleep in a cardboard box than at the Belle Grove Plantation or the Albert Shafsky House, or any of the other places listed in the Hundred Most Haunted Hotels and B&Bs in America, none of which is named the Scarriott for some reason.

Now I think that guys who wear baseball caps with their sunglasses perched on the brims have guns, if—and this is important—the lenses of those sunglasses are mirrored or fade from orange to yellow, like a tequila sunrise.

Another word I've added to "the list" is "conversation," as in "We need to have a national conversation about_________." This is employed by the left to mean "You need to listen to me use the word 'diversity' for an hour.

My sisters and I refuse to feel bad about shopping. And why should we? Obviously we have some hole we're trying to fill, but doesn't everyone? And isn't filling it with berets the size of toilet-seat covers, if not more practical, then at least healthier than filling it with frosting or heroin or unsafe sex with strangers?

Why, after all these years, do I still believe that expensive clothing signifies anything more than a disposable income, that tweed and cashmere actually bespeak refinement?

Amy came for dinner and before eating we watched a dozen YouTube videos by an outfit called Soft White Underbelly. They provide great lighting and a judgment-free space for drug addicts, prostitutes, pimps, hard-core alcoholics, and people who are just plain crazy. Then they ask them really good questions. One of our favorite interviews was with a man who was transitioning into a gender-less dragon.

It would make me eligible for health insurance, which I'll need after I slit my wrists.

When the week was over, we went to Paris. There are any number of stores there that time seems to have forgotten. At one of them I bought five rubber noses. That's one for every serial killer I read about while I was in France.

She'd never expressed any great interest in the outdoors, so I scattered her remains on the carpet and then vacuumed her back up.

Because I am both a glutton and a masochist, my standard complaint, 'That was so bad,' is always followed by 'And there was so little of it!