Quotes from David Sedaris

of yesterday, the London Underground announcements will no longer begin with "Ladies and gentlemen." Gender-queer people said it made them feel excluded, so from now on the conductors will say, "Hello, everyone.

Eternally Weeps the Groundhog.

You steal the things that you covet while you take the things the original owner is incapable of appreciating

Watching him was like opening the door to a singing telegram: you know it's supposed to be entertaining, but you can't get beyond the sad fact that this person actually thinks he's bringing some joy into your life.

In the end I decided the word was more about him than it was about me. But isn't it often that way? It's one thing for someone to describe you in print, to go through several drafts and, after careful consideration, choose the adjective

Jews in concentration camps had shaved heads and tattoos. You'd think the anti-Semites would go for a different look.

Michael is in a group I've been hearing a lot about lately. White men who, following eight years of a black president, feel forgotten.

My brother politely ma'ams and sirs all strangers but refers to friends and family, his father included, as either "bitch" or "motherfucker.

This was not the adulthood that I had predicted for myself: an author of books, spending a week in Hawaii with his handsome longtime boyfriend before deciding which house to return to. I had wished for it, sure, but I also wished for a complete head transplant.

What had we talked about and why hadn't I paid attention?

By Thanksgiving I was imagining people naked rather than dead and naked, which was an improvement.

But it isn't like real work. The travel can occasionally be taxing, but anyone can turn pages and read out loud. What takes time are the postshow book signings—my fault because I talk too much.

I would later discover it was a bad idea to gather more than two of these people in an enclosed area for any length of time. The stage was not only a physical place but also a state of mind, and the word audience was defined as anyone forced to suffer your company. We young actors were a string of lightbulbs left burning 24 hours a day, exhausting ourselves and others with our self-proclaimed brilliance.

You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger; it is foolish even to try. The most you can do is eat up while you still can, stuffing yourself, shoveling it in with both hands and licking clean the plates, recalling every course in vivid detail.

Ours is the only club I'd ever wanted to be a member of, so I couldn't imagine quitting.

If owls were the professors of the avian kingdom, then kookaburras, I thought, might well be the gym teachers.

To be exotic, on the other hand, one had to think not just outside the box but outside the world of boxes.

Well, where did it come from?" I asked. "How did I get it?" "How do we get most things?" he answered. "We buy them?

How can you not want to know what your parasites are talking about?

Fiecare reuniune are un moment anume in care se sparge. Ajuns la maturitate, mi se intampla de multe ori sa incerc sa identific acest moment, temandu-ma in acelasi timp, de inevitabilul care urmeaza sa se produca. Musafirii vor repeta aceleasi poante, iar la un moment dat, va fi prea mult - sau vei ramane fara iarba sau bautura, si-ti dai astfel seama ca atat ati avut in comun.

No," I corrected her, "I'm not a misogynist, I'm a misanthrope. I hate everyone equally.

looked at her picture on Facebook and thought, Of course.

I met a Bulgarian. "In my country, you say to someone you hate, 'May you build a house from your kidney stones.

The Romanians really do lead the world when it comes to cursing.