Quotes from David Sedaris

Why does everything that counters Joan's worldview have to be false? Bad things happen: People are discriminated against and tortured. Kittens swallow fishhooks and get shot in the head. I'm not saying you should dwell solely on the negative, but why blot it out entirely, especially in a social setting where it's practically your duty to spark debate and lively conversation?

For my fifty dollars, I want to leave the doctor's office in tears, but instead I walk out feeling like a hypochondriac

waiting on the other side of sixteen.

The man spoke with an accent, and though I couldn't exactly place it, I knew that he was poor. His voice had snakes in it. And dysentery, and mangoes.

The camera has replaced actual looking and turned life into evidence. It drives me crazy. February 1, 2014

Under certain circumstances parental pride is understandable but it has no place in the theater, where it tends to encourage a child to believe in a talent that, more often than not, simply fails to exist.

It was as if I'd learned to grieve by watching television:

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

There's a short circuit between my brain and my tongue, thus "Leave me the fuck alone" comes out as "Well, maybe. Sure. I guess I can see your point." This

Do you think it was my fault that she drank?" my father asked not long ago. It's the assumption of an amateur, someone who stops after his second vodka tonic and quits taking his pain medication before the prescription runs out. It's almost laughable, this insistence on a reason. I think my mother was lonely without her children—her fan club. But I think she drank because she was an alcoholic.

even then that without them, I was nothing. Not a son or a brother but just a boy—and

November 4, 1987 Chicago I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read I LOVE KILLING COMMUNISTS. The word love was replaced by a heart shape I'm guessing they'll put on the typewriter keyboard any day now, right beside the exclamation point. The bumper sticker was on a Ford Fairlane on Montrose Avenue.

We passed a gun shop advertising a Blowout Sale. While listening to a country music station,we heard a talk/song narrated by our flag. I flew proudly at Iwo Jima and the blustering deserts of Kuwait, anywhere freedom is threatened, you will find me.

I think we've both seen this coming for a long… time. The only question left is… what are we going to do about it? Oh, baby, let's run wild.

Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of marijuana, and it's funny how sleep sort of just comes…I'm now told that this is not called 'going to sleep' but rather 'passing out,' a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgement.

While I was gone Hugh, Manuela, and Dario attended Franck's surprise fortieth-birthday party. One of the guests was a sophisticated mother of three who announced that she hated the zoo at the Jardin des Plantes because it was cruel to keep the animals in such small cages. She went on and on and then, at the end of the evening, she unlocked her car and released her golden retriever, who'd spent the last six hours in the trunk.

but that's what fantasies are for: they allow you to skip the degradation and head straight to the top. I'd

By the time a nurse told me about a patient who had inserted an electric toothbrush up inside himself, and another who'd managed a two-liter bottle of Diet Mountain Dew, I was so inured that I said only, "Wait a minute. Diet?

I'm also getting a kick out of "having a blue," which means having a fight. You could say, "It was a serious blue," or "We had a blue," or "If I talk to this woman there's going to be a blue." You could also say, "I'm ready to put the blue on.

Nick Papanides," I say, spitting into the sink. "Let me tell you a little something, Mister. You can rot in Hell for all I care. You can …" I watch my saliva clinging to the rim of the basin and wonder where the bubbles come from. Is that air or are we all naturally carbonated?

Motherfucker, I ain't seen pussy in so long, I'd throw stones at it.

Lisa was not a daughter now but just another female unable to control her wildly shifting emotions.

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.

A few hours laterDad called again. The vet had put his Great Dane, Sophie, on antibiotics, and, figuring it was all basically the same thing, he had started taking them. I'm just not sure of the dose, he said. Lisa then called me. Can you believe this? I thought she was upset that her father was taking pills meant for a dog, and then I remembered who I was talking to. I mean, how is Sophie supposed to get better when Dad is taking all her medicine? I just don't think that's right.