Top 380 David Sedaris Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Gambling to me is what a telephone pole might be to a groundhog. He sees that it’s there but doesn’t for the life of him understand why.”

— David Sedaris

202. “You look like some cousin of mine.” The latter would work only if you were Asian, but even then it’s a little creepy, the implication being “the cousin I have always wanted to undress and ejaculate on.”

— David Sedaris

203. “I always think it’s a good policy to like the people who like you.”

— David Sedaris

204. “Yesterday a woman had her son pee into a cup, which of course tipped over. “That’s fine,” I said, “but Santa’s also going to need a stool sample.”

— David Sedaris

205. “Other people’s pain is uninteresting. My own, though, is spellbinding.”

— David Sedaris

206. “He looked as though his life had not only passed him by but paused along the way to spit in his face.”

— David Sedaris

207. “There were no computers in my high school, and the first two times I attempted college, people were still counting on their fingers and removing their shoes when the numbers got above ten.”

— David Sedaris

208. “Everyone in America is extremely concerned with hydration. Go more than five minutes without drinking, and you’ll surely be discovered behind a potted plant, dried out like some escaped hermit crab.”

— David Sedaris

209. “I see his presidential bid as just another commercial for himself. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were to name the Hamburglar as his running mate.”

— David Sedaris

210. “College is the best thing that can ever happen to you,” my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking...”

— David Sedaris

211. “Opinions constantly shifted and evolved, were fluid the same way thoughts were. Ten minutes into The Exorcist you might say, “This is boring.” An hour later you could decide that it was the best thing you’d ever seen, and it was no different with people. The villain at three in the afternoon might be the hero by sunset. It was all just storytelling.”

— David Sedaris

212. “The list” is a growing collection of words and phrases we’d outlaw if given the power to do so. It includes “awesome,” of course, and “It is what it is,” which is ubiquitous now and means absolutely nothing, as far as we can see.”

— David Sedaris

213. “He told me that his sister is clinically depressed and read Naked during a month-long visit to a psychiatric hospital. According to him, once she’d finished, she loaned it to a fellow patient, who, in turn, loaned it to someone else. The book seemed to lift people’s spirits, and as a result, the hospital has made it recommended reading. I’m not sure whether I believe this, but it’s extremely flattering to think my book is being passed around a German asylum.”

— David Sedaris

214. “I don’t know that it had anything to do with us,” my father said. But how could it have not? Doesn’t the blood of every suicide splash back on our faces?”

— David Sedaris

215. “It was the stupidest thing the cat had ever heard of, an AA program in prison.”

— David Sedaris

216. “I felt betrayed, the way you do when you discover that your cat has a secret secondary life and is being fed by neighbors who call him something stupid like Calypso. Worse is that he loves them as much as he loves you, which is to say not at all, really. The entire relationship has been your own invention.”

— David Sedaris

217. “When you read comic material and people aren’t laughing how do you know they’re listening.”

— David Sedaris

218. “Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless – that’s what hell must be like.”

— David Sedaris

219. “In my book, if you want to be treated like an old person, you have to look like one. That means no face-lift, no blond hair, and definitely no fishnet stockings.”

— David Sedaris

220. “Neighbors would pass, and when they honked I’d remember that I was in my Speedo. Then I’d wrap my towel like a skirt around my waist and remind my sisters that this was not girlish but Egyptian, thank you very much.”

— David Sedaris

221. “I’m not a reporter but the ‘New Yorker’ treats everyone like a reporter.”

— David Sedaris

222. “Movie characters might chase each other through the fog or race down the stairs of burning buildings, but that’s for beginners. Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you’re offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone’s feelings. I wanted to say something to this effect, but my hand puppets were back home in their drawer. Instead, I pulled my chair a few inches closer, and we sat silently at our little table on the square, looking for all the world like two people in love.”

— David Sedaris

223. “On a recent flight from Tokyo to Beijing, at around the time that my lunch tray was taken away, I remembered that I needed to learn Mandarin. “Goddamnit,” I whispered. “I knew I forgot something.”

— David Sedaris

224. “If I’m riding my bike I just replay the same scenarios over and over in my head, like I haven’t had a new mental adventure since high school. So that’s what I like about books on tape, so my mind can’t wander anywhere.”

— David Sedaris

225. “The better country club operated on the principle that Raleigh mattered, that its old families were fine ones, and that they needed a place where they could enjoy one another’s company without being pawed at. Had we not found this laughable, our country club might have felt desperate.”

— David Sedaris

226. “I felt betrayed, the way you do when you discover that your cat has a secret secondary life and is being fed by neighbors who call him something stupid like Calypso.”

— David Sedaris

227. “Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it’s funny how sleep sort of just comes.”

— David Sedaris

228. “I’ve never gone on Facebook and am not sure I understand it. The same goes for Twitter. I have someone sending tweets and pretending to be me, but I don’t know why.”

— David Sedaris

229. “And he always has a fantastic body, shown at its best on the cross, which – face it – was practically designed to make a man’s stomach and shoulders look good.”

— David Sedaris

230. “When they’re born outside, crows come and pluck their eyes out.”

— David Sedaris

231. “To be fair, he had never actually promised to be monogamous. That was my idea, and though I tried my hardest to convert him, the allure of other people was just too great.”

— David Sedaris

232. “To spend your days in the company of naked men – that was the life for me. ‘Turn a bit to the left, Jean-Claude. I long to capture the playful quality of your buttocks.”

— David Sedaris

233. “Nobody likes having a problem, but having a convoluted, bureaucratic one is even more galling.”

— David Sedaris

234. “He didn’t understand that it’s all connected, that one subject leads to another and forms a kind of chain that rises its head and nods like cobra when you’re sucking on a bong after three days of no sleep. On acid, it’s even wilder and appears to eat things. But not having gone to college, my dad had no concept of a well-rounded liberal arts education.”

— David Sedaris

235. “It means ‘female dog,’” I’d explained to my sisters, “but it also means ’a woman who’s crabby and won’t let you be yourself.”

— David Sedaris

236. “The only bright spot in the entire evening was the presence of Kevin “Tubby” Matchwell, the eleven-year-old porker who tackled the role of Santa with a beguiling authenticity. The false beard tended to muffle his speech, but they could hear his chafing thighs all the way to the North Pole.”

— David Sedaris

237. “Neither of them had ever picked up a pen in their life, but all of a sudden they’re poets, right, like that’s all it takes – being in love.”

— David Sedaris

238. “Finally he was hit by a train while walking, which is strange because trains don’t generally sneak up on people. For the most part, barring a derailment, you know exactly where to find them.”

— David Sedaris

239. “When it’s my turn, I’ll open my mouth, unable to speak, and feel a little tap on my wrist. Time to stand up, my watch will whisper. Then, before killing myself, I’ll say one last time, “I am standing up.”

— David Sedaris

240. “When her muzzle grew more white than brown, the chipmunk forgot that she and the squirrel had had nothing to talk about. She forgot the definition of “jazz” as well and came to think of it as every beautiful thing she had ever failed to appreciate: the taste of warm rain; the smell of a baby; the din of a swollen river, rushing past her tree and onward to infinity.”

— David Sedaris

241. “Real trouble doesn’t walk around with a ponytail. It doesn’t have a Mohawk or special shoelace patterns. Real trouble has a bad complexion and a Windbreaker.”

— David Sedaris

242. “Bill Gates, who has murdered more innocents than even the Clintons, apparently.”

— David Sedaris

243. “It’s common to be misread by people who don’t know you.”

— David Sedaris

244. “He secretly thinks he looks like Marlon Brando, but take a good look a young Marlin Perkins is more like it! Maybe that’s what he sees in Annette Kelper – he’s an animal lover.”

— David Sedaris

245. “Each one of us is left to choose our own quality of life and take pleasure where we find it with the understanding that, like Mom used to say, sooner or later something’s gonna get you.”

— David Sedaris

246. “When I look at a lot of older stuff that I’ve written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.”

— David Sedaris

247. “Famous people like to choose friends who won’t go around repeating their conversations and details about them.”

— David Sedaris

248. “The trouble with aggressive nonsmokers is that they feel they are doing you a favor by not allowing you to smoke. They seem to think that one day you’ll look back and thank them for those precious fifteen seconds they just added to your life. What they don’t understand is that those are just fifteen more seconds you can spend hating their guts and plotting revenge.”

— David Sedaris

249. “We’re forever blaming the airline industry for turning us into monsters: it’s the fault of the ticket agents, the baggage handlers, the slowpokes at the newsstands and the fast food restaurants. But what if this is who we truly are, and the airport’s just a forum that allows us to be our real selves, not just hateful but gloriously so?”

— David Sedaris

250. “I just think that the people who say: ‘That’s not true’ when someone tells a story at dinner are the people who didn’t get any laughs when they told their story.”

— David Sedaris