Top 380 David Sedaris Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “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

252. “I spent months searching for some secret code before I realized that common sense has nothing to do with it. Hysteria, psychosis, torture, depression: I was told that if something is unpleasant it’s probably feminine. This encouraged me, but the theory was blown by such masculine nouns as murder, toothache, and rollerblade. I have no problem learning the words themselves, it’s the sexes that trip me up and refuse to stick.”

— David Sedaris

253. “But most good movies have a gun in them.”

— David Sedaris

254. “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

255. “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

256. “Amy adored both the new look and the new person it allowed her to be. Following the photo shoot, she wore her bruises to the dry cleaner and the grocery store. Most people nervously looked away, but on the rare occasions someone would ask what happened, my sister would smile as brightly as possible, saying, ‘I’m in love. Can you believe it? I’m finally, totally in love, and I feel great.”

— David Sedaris

257. “I don’t like being left to my own thoughts.”

— David Sedaris

258. “If you read an essay in Esquire and don’t like it, there could be something wrong with the essay. If it’s in The New Yorker, on the other hand, and you don’t like it, there’s something wrong with you.”

— David Sedaris

259. “You’re not supposed to talk about your good deeds, I know. It effectively negates them and in the process makes people hate you.”

— David Sedaris

260. “It’s not that I don’t have opinions about these things. I just don’t feel they’re in any way special. Sure, I follow the news. I read the papers and listen to the radio, but I’m not privy to any inside information. When it comes to politics, all I can offer is emotion. My perspective might be slightly different, but so is anyone’s when they live overseas.”

— David Sedaris

261. “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

262. “I’ve been keeping diaries for 27 years.”

— David Sedaris

263. “It hardly seemed fair, because, unlike a horse or a Seeing Eye dog, the whole glory of being a bird is that nobody would ever put you to work.”

— David Sedaris

264. “When young, the animals were sweet. Then one day they became moody and violent, like human teenagers.”

— David Sedaris

265. “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

266. “It was one of those situations I often find myself in while traveling. Something’s said by a stranger I’ve been randomly thrown into contact with, and I want to say, “Listen. I’m with you on most of this, but before we continue, I need to know who you voted for in the last election.”

— David Sedaris

267. “I always used to reach for the cigarette when the phone rang, and I figured nobody would ever call me in Tokyo. The time difference is so profound it’s, like, already September in Tokyo, and I figured nobody would be able to work it out.”

— David Sedaris

268. “The message was that if something is free, you should only take the best. If, on the other hand, you’re forced to pay, it’s best to lower the bar and not be so choosy.”

— David Sedaris

269. “In my experience, it was hard to write without your preferred tools, but impossible to write without a cigarette.”

— David Sedaris

270. “In the Netherlands now, I imagine it’s legal to marry your own children. Get them pregnant, and you can abort your unborn grandbabies in a free clinic that used to be a church.”

— David Sedaris

271. “Making it worse, I had to sit through another endless preview for Titanic. Who do they think is going to see that movie?”

— David Sedaris

272. “Look at yourself on the day that you graduated from college, then look at yourself today. I did that recently and it was like, ‘Yikes! What the hell happened?”

— David Sedaris

273. “Something has changed, and now, when I look at my students, I see only people who are going to eat up my time.”

— David Sedaris

274. “That said, I admire people who are curious and open their minds to new possibilities, especially after a certain age. You have to draw the line somewhere, though, and with me it’s my anus.”

— David Sedaris

275. “Also, I used to think that one day I might get someone to iron my shirts, but the truth is I really like doing them myself.”

— David Sedaris

276. “You’re trying to convince me?” Amy asked. “The one who has a second apartment two blocks from her first apartment just so she can get away from her rabbit for a couple of hours a day?”

— David Sedaris

277. “When you’re young it’s easy to believe that such a opportunity will come again, maybe even a better one.”

— David Sedaris

278. “People ask me, ‘Have you ever considered doing stand-up?’ To me it would be less offensive if someone asked me, ‘Have you ever considered dental implants?’”

— David Sedaris

279. “A young couple strolls by, the adoration of one bouncing off the tolerance of the other.”

— David Sedaris

280. “For to witness majesty, to find yourself literally touched by it – isn’t that what we’ve all been waiting for?”

— David Sedaris

281. “A lot of our outlawed terms were invented by black people and then picked up by whites, who held on to them way past their expiration date. ‘My bad,’ for example, and ‘I’ve got your back’ and ‘You go, girlfriend.’ They’re the verbal equivalents of sitcom grandmothers high-fiving one another, and on hearing them, I wince and feel ashamed of my entire race.”

— David Sedaris

282. “I don’t really do very well when I’m sent somewhere. A lot of magazines want to send you somewhere to do something. They want you to stow away on a ship, or something like that.”

— David Sedaris

283. “The nice thing about crowds is that someone can throw a bottle and you don’t take it personally.”

— David Sedaris

284. “July 3, 1981 Raleigh There is a new cancer that strikes only homosexual men. I heard about it on the radio tonight.”

— David Sedaris

285. “I go to the movies at least five times a week, and after a while everything becomes a blur to me.”

— David Sedaris

286. “I don’t like to read anything on the radio for the very first time, because I don’t have any notion of a reaction. When I read it out loud, then I get an idea of that, and more of an idea of how to read.”

— David Sedaris

287. “You have how many children in your family?” the teacher would ask. “I’m guessing you must be Catholic, am I right?”

— David Sedaris

288. “The humor section is the last place an author wants to be. They put your stuff next to collections of Cathy cartoons.”

— David Sedaris

289. “It is not unpleasant to hold someone else’s warm teeth in your hand...”

— David Sedaris

290. “There are lots of things that happen to me that I don’t write about.”

— David Sedaris

291. “Perhaps the little Negro girl was holding a concealed razor blade. Maybe she was one of the troublemakers out for a fresh white scalp.”

— David Sedaris

292. “I think there is a difference between comic essays and war reporting, and people can tell that.”

— David Sedaris

293. “I know it sounds calculating, but if you’re not cute, you might as well be clever.”

— David Sedaris

294. “It was like watching someone you hate getting mugged: three seconds of hard-core violence, and when it was over you just wanted it to happen again.”

— David Sedaris

295. “It was, I thought, what evil must smell like.”

— David Sedaris

296. “But I’m a humorist. I’m not a reporter, I never pretended to be a reporter.”

— David Sedaris

297. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve enjoyed silence in an American theater. It’s easy to believe that our audiences spend the day saying nothing, actually saving their voices for the moment the picture begins.”

— David Sedaris

298. “I’ve always had a way with the little people, making it a point to humor them without looking down my nose at their wasted empty lives.”

— David Sedaris

299. “I tend to show everything I do to my family, to check they won’t be offended.”

— David Sedaris

300. “That’s the thing with a diary, though. In order to record your life, you sort of need to live it. Not at your desk, but beyond it. Out in the world where it’s so beautiful and complex and painful that sometimes you just need to sit down and write about it.”

— David Sedaris