Top 380 David Sedaris Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Nobody dreams of the things he already has.”

— David Sedaris

52. “If I were president, I would turn the tables and allow the fetus to abort its mother.”

— David Sedaris

53. “Standing in a two-hour line makes people worry that they’re not living in a democratic nation. People stand in line for two houres and they go over the edge.”

— David Sedaris

54. “Every so often my life will feel like a story. It doesn’t have to be a big thing; in fact, most often, it’s just the opposite.”

— David Sedaris

55. “I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.”

— David Sedaris

56. “If you don’t think a mental patient has the right to bring a sawed-off shotgun to the church where his ex-girlfriend is getting married, you’re part of the problem.”

— David Sedaris

57. “That’s the problem with wishes, they ensnare you. In fairy tales they’re nothing but trouble, magnifying the greed and vanity of the person for whom they are granted.”

— David Sedaris

58. “I like the kind of man John is. He watches things closely and then does nothing with the information.”

— David Sedaris

59. “Most of the blame goes to the director, who seems to have picked up her staging secrets from the school’s crossing guard.”

— David Sedaris

60. “As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.”

— David Sedaris

61. “It is what it is,” which is ubiquitous now and means absolutely nothing, as far as we can see. “Isn’t that the state motto of South Dakota?” I said the second or third time I heard it.”

— David Sedaris

62. “I’ve never made up events, but I’ve always been a big exaggerator. It’s written on my humorist license that I’m allowed to do that.”

— David Sedaris

63. “It really is torture to sit around the house and write all day. I’m thinking it might motivate me to finish the book faster, the thought that after it’s finished I can return to housecleaning. The.”

— David Sedaris

64. “It’s not lost on me that I’m so busy recording life, I don’t have time to really live it.”

— David Sedaris

65. “A wise man once said that in order to communicate, you have to be able to speak in someone else’s language.”

— David Sedaris

66. “Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you’ve come to mow its lawns.”

— David Sedaris

67. “He spends a lot of time telling you how smart he is, which is odd because, if you’re truly all that bright, people can usually figure it out on their own.”

— David Sedaris

68. “I started writing one afternoon when I was twenty, and ever since then I have written every day. At first I had to force myself. Then it became part of my identity, and I did it without thinking.”

— David Sedaris

69. “Though harsh in other respects, prison would be an excellent place to learn a foreign language – total immersion, and you’d have the new slang before it even hit the streets.”

— David Sedaris

70. “I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like.”

— David Sedaris

71. “You have what we in France call ‘good time teeth,’” she said. “Why on earth would you want to change them?” “Um, because I can floss with the sash to my bathrobe?”

— David Sedaris

72. “I dragged my balls across your mother’s memorial cake, from cherry to cherry, and to each of the candles.”

— David Sedaris

73. “My sister Tiffany told me years ago, ‘You can never write about me.’ Then she called six months ago and said she wanted to be in a story. She was worried people thought I didn’t like her.”

— David Sedaris

74. “In my dream world gay people in America would get the right to marry, and not a one of them would use that right.”

— David Sedaris

75. “Have a blessed day.” This can make you feel like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.”

— David Sedaris

76. “The rules were just different back then, especially in regard to corporal punishment. Not only could you hit your own children, but you could also hit other people’s.”

— David Sedaris

77. “I see you that have a little swimming mouse.”

— David Sedaris

78. “Snowball just leads elves on, elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game.”

— David Sedaris

79. “Some friendships are formed by a commonality of interests and ideas: you both love judo or camping or making your own sausage. Other friendships are forged in alliance against a common enemy.”

— David Sedaris

80. “I’m for gay elopement, not for gay weddings. I’ve been with my boyfriend for twenty years. I don’t feel like that would validate our relationship in any way. But I would really fight for someone else to have the right. Just elope, though, please.”

— David Sedaris

81. “I’d tried to straighten him out, but there’s only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer.”

— David Sedaris

82. “Still, there were moments when, against all reason, I thought I might be a genius. These moments were provoked not by any particular accomplishment but by cocaine and crystal methamphetamine – drugs that allow you to lean over a mirror with a straw up your nose, suck up an entire week’s paycheck, and think, “God, I’m smart.”

— David Sedaris

83. “My boyfriend got me a computer three years ago. I’ll admit it does make things a lot easier. When I was working on a typewriter and I whited out a line, often I would choose a word to go in the space just because it fit. Now I don’t have to do that.”

— David Sedaris

84. “Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.”

— David Sedaris

85. “The drama bug strikes hardest with Jews, homosexuals and plump women who wear their hair in bangs. These are people who, for one reason or another, desperately crave attention.”

— David Sedaris

86. “Today the teacher called me a sadist. I tried to say that was like the pot calling the kettle black but came out with something closer to “That is like a pan saying to a dark pan, ‘You are a pan.”

— David Sedaris

87. “We can’t profess love without talking through hand puppets.”

— David Sedaris

88. “What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it.”

— David Sedaris

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

— David Sedaris

90. “Hugh consoled me, saying, “Don’t let it get to you. There are plenty of things you’re good at.” When asked for some examples, he listed vacuuming and naming stuffed animals. He says he can probably come up with a few more, but he’ll need some time to think.”

— David Sedaris

91. “At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn’t imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.”

— David Sedaris

92. “All I do is lie, and that has made me immune to compliments.”

— David Sedaris

93. “Actually I liked that ‘Let the Right One In,’ that Swedish vampire movie.”

— David Sedaris

94. “It make one’s mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment.”

— David Sedaris

95. “Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. “Is thems the thoughts of cows?” I’d ask the butcher, pointing to the calves’ brains displayed in the front window.”

— David Sedaris

96. “People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American.”

— David Sedaris

97. “This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable.”

— David Sedaris

98. “I cry all the time when I watch ‘Glee’ because I don’t know if it’s satire or melodrama and that makes me feel like the writing is aware of itself, and that makes it OK to cry.”

— David Sedaris

99. “I haven’t got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.”

— David Sedaris

100. “When I was seven years old, my family moved to North Carolina. When he was seven years old, Hugh’s family moved to the Congo. We had a collie and a house cat. They had a monkey and two horses named Charlie Brown and Satan. I threw stones at stop signs. Hugh threw stones at crocodiles. The verbs are the same, but he definitely wins the prize when it comes to nouns and objects.”

— David Sedaris