Top 380 David Sedaris Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 8

151. “When it comes time to decide who gets the bottom bunk, I think anyone would agree that there’s a lot to be said for doing things the hard way.”

— David Sedaris

152. “I sometimes read books on my iPad.”

— David Sedaris

153. “I cried for it all and wondered why so few songs were written about cats.”

— David Sedaris

154. “The approach of Christmas signifies three things: bad movies, unforgivable television, and even worse theater. I’m talking bone-crushing theater, the type our ancient ancestors used to oppress their enemies before the invention of the stretching rack.”

— David Sedaris

155. “At what point had I realized that class couldn’t save you, that addiction or mental illness didn’t care whether you’d taken piano lessons or spent a summer in Europe?”

— David Sedaris

156. “Given enough time, I guess anything can look good. All it has to do is survive.”

— David Sedaris

157. “Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you’re in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can’t be thought of as cute.”

— David Sedaris

158. “Never again would I have so many friends, and such good ones, though I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps I’ve grown less likable over the years, or maybe I’ve just forgotten how to meet people. The initial introduction – the shaking-hands part – I can still manage. It’s the follow-up that throws me. Who calls whom, and how often? What if you decide after the second or third meeting that you don’t really like this person? Up to what point are you allowed to back out?”

— David Sedaris

159. “Poor, chubby Annette Kelper, who desperately tries to pretend that nobody notices the fact that she’s balding on top of her head. That’s right. Look closely – balding just like a man. Perhaps Randy feels sorry for chrome-dome Annette.”

— David Sedaris

160. “That man tried to picka my frienda’s pocketoni!”

— David Sedaris

161. “The younger an ingredient, the more highly it was valued, thus the baby chicken, the baby spinach, the newborn asparagus, each pale stalk as slender as a fang.”

— David Sedaris

162. “Shopping has nothing to do with money. If you have it, you go to stores and galleries, and if not, you haunt flea markets or Goodwills. Never, though, do you not do it, choosing instead to visit a park or a temple or some cultural institution where they don’t sell things.”

— David Sedaris

163. “Sometimes with ‘The New Yorker,’ they have grammar rules that just don’t feel right in my mouth.”

— David Sedaris

164. “My feet are completely flat, but for most of my life they were still shaped like feet. Now, thanks to bunions, they’re shaped more like states, wide boring ones that nobody wants to drive through.”

— David Sedaris

165. “I realized I was a teacher when I felt warm during class and got up to open the door. Later on there was noise in the hallway, so I got up and shut it. Students can’t open and close the door whenever they feel like it.”

— David Sedaris

166. “Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable downswing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or you’ll run out of dope or liquor and realize that it was all you ever had in common.”

— David Sedaris

167. “My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves.”

— David Sedaris

168. “Up close the city constitutes an oppressive series of staircases, but from a distance it inspires fantasies of wealth and power so profound that even our communists are temporarily rendered speechless.”

— David Sedaris

169. “The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I’ve discovered it can work miracles as long as you keep telling yourself, “I want to love, I want to live...”

— David Sedaris

170. “We were standing near the Lollipop Forest when we realized that Santa is an anagram of Satan... Overhearing the customers we would substitute the Satan for the world Santa.”

— David Sedaris

171. “They’re hungry for something they know nothing about, but we, we know all too well that the price of fame is the loss of privacy.”

— David Sedaris

172. “Nobody pours stuffing like you do, my friend.”

— David Sedaris

173. “I don’t worry about being exposed. When I’m writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don’t write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary.”

— David Sedaris

174. “I said that Santa no longer traffics in coal. Instead, if you’re bad he comes to your house and steals things.”

— David Sedaris

175. “I’ve been around for nearly half a century, yet still I’m afraid of everything and everyone. A child sits beside me on a plane and I make conversation, thinking how stupid I must sound. The downstairs neighbors invite me to a party and, after claiming that I have a previous engagement, I spend the entire evening confined to my bed, afraid to walk around because they might hear my footsteps.”

— David Sedaris

176. “Honestly, though, does choice even come into it? Is it my fault that the good times fade to nothing while the bad ones burn forever bright?”

— David Sedaris

177. “I don’t like travelling if I know I have to write about it.”

— David Sedaris

178. “I can’t be alone in this, can I? And, of course, you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Therefore you keep the crocheted owl given to you by your second-youngest sister and accidentally on purpose drop the mug that reads “Owl Love You Always” and was sent by someone who clearly never knew you to begin with.”

— David Sedaris

179. “She just happens to be my father, young man, and I’d appreciate it of you’d show her a little respect.”

— David Sedaris

180. “Story-telling is pivotal to our well-being, as are nonethnic jokes and riddles.”

— David Sedaris

181. “The difference between the first time I read something and the tenth time I read something is generally pretty profound. Even if the script is the same, just the way that I read it is different.”

— David Sedaris

182. “In books and movies infidelity always looks so compelling, so right. Here are people who defy petty convention and are rewarded with only the tastiest bits of human experience.”

— David Sedaris

183. “What can you say about the family who is suing the railroad after their drunk son was killed walking on the tracks? Trains don’t normally sneak up on people. Unless they’ve derailed, you pretty much know where to find them.”

— David Sedaris

184. “While the builders worked on the cottage, Hugh lived in what used to be the stable but was later converted into a guesthouse, the kind you’d have if you wanted to either discourage guests or contain them in one spot while slowly depressing them to death.”

— David Sedaris

185. “After I die, and you read something bad about yourself in my diary, do yourself a favor and keep reading,” I often say to Hugh. “I promise that on the next page you’ll find something flattering. Or maybe the page after that.”

— David Sedaris

186. “Use the word “y’all,” and before you knew it, you’d find yourself in a haystack French-kissing an underage goat. Along with grits and hush puppies, the abbreviated form of you all was a dangerous step on an insidious path leading straight to the doors of the Baptist church.”

— David Sedaris

187. “On the plane from Paris I heard a man say, “The first thing I’m going to do when I get home is order a Big Gulp. I’m going to supersize everything!” He said he’d been thirsty the entire time he was in Paris, and though I’d never thought about it, if you’re used to carrying a trash-can-size cup filled with crushed ice and soda, I suppose it would be hard to spend a few weeks in Europe.”

— David Sedaris

188. “The thing about Hawaii, at least the part that is geared toward tourists, is that it’s exactly what it promises to be. Step off the plane, and someone places a lei around your neck, as if it were something you had earned – an Olympic medal for sitting on your ass. Raise a hand above your shoulder and, no matter where you are, a drink will appear: something served in a hollowed-out pineapple, or perhaps in a coconut that’s been sawed in half. Just like in the time before glasses! you think.”

— David Sedaris

189. “My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world.”

— David Sedaris

190. “Whenever I write about my family, I start by getting my parent’s approval. I like to think I write about them with obvious affection. When it comes to the people I’m related to, I consider myself to be very lucky.”

— David Sedaris

191. “The landscape is best described as ‘pedestrian hostile.’ It’s pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head.”

— David Sedaris

192. “But at the end of every show we would realize that true happiness often lies where you very least expect it. It might arrive in a form of a gentle breeze or a handful of peanuts, but when it came, we would seize it with our own brand of folksy wisdom.”

— David Sedaris

193. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,? I hear. ‘Can we please just try to have a good time?’ This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn’t work. I’ve tried it.”

— David Sedaris

194. “I’m sad to be finishing school. I liked being in college. It was respectable to be a student. You get discount admissions all over town, and it makes you work.”

— David Sedaris

195. “It’s not lost on me that I’m so busy recording life, I don’t have time to really live it. I’ve become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It’s not “Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece” but “Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!”

— David Sedaris

196. “If you stepped out of the shower and saw a leprechaun standing at the base of your toilet, would you scream, or would you innately understand that he meant you no harm?”

— David Sedaris

197. “We sweat for our pretensions. It.”

— David Sedaris

198. “This is a busy week with me and lunatics, whom I tend to see as either signs or messengers.”

— David Sedaris

199. “Half the people I know have dead animals in their freezers: reptiles, birds, mammals. Is that normal?”

— David Sedaris

200. “I meet people at book signings. My record now, for signing, is ten and a half hours in one sitting.”

— David Sedaris