Latest David Sedaris Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The way Trump talks about Obama: presidents don't do that! What we're seeing now is a whole new level of vulgarity. I'm really hoping that it's not the rule from here on out. It's really distressing for me to witness this. I really hope we don't have to throw all decency out the window, just because Trump's president.

  David Sedaris

  President, Window, Witness

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I don't think I'm a witty person. To me, a witty person is a funny person who is also a smart person. My friend David Rakoff, who died a few years ago, he was a witty person. Fran Lebowitz is a witty person. I don't think there are that many witty people around, so you tend to notice them when they do come around. I don't consider myself to be that.

  David Sedaris

  Witty, Smart, Thinking

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I spend so much time like living in the past or the future. I mean, I think most people do, really. And the moments when you're really present in your life can be pretty rare, really.

  David Sedaris

  Mean, Past, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

• Maybe one day, I would write a story about arguing in public, and those would come in handy in some way.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, One Day, Arguing

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I wanted to be a visual artist, but I realized I was more affected by what I read than by what I saw. I would go to a show at a museum and look at a painting and say, 'Oh I wish I owned that,' and that would be the end of my relationship with a painting. With a short story I would read or with an author I would discover I could be haunted. It would affect my mood and affect the way that I saw the world. I thought, wow, it would be amazing to be able to do that.

  David Sedaris

  Artist, Wish, World

  "David Sedaris diaries are mundane, profane, downright odd". The Associated Press Interview, abcnews.go.com. June 2, 2017.

• I rejected the word humorist for a long time because I thought that it meant you had, like, a cardigan sweater with patches on the elbows, but now I'm old and I do. I grew into that word. I think at heart, all this time, I've been a diarist. I'm not ashamed of it.

  David Sedaris

  Heart, Thinking, Long

  "David Sedaris diaries are mundane, profane, downright odd". The Associated Press Interview, abcnews.go.com. June 2, 2017.

• I'm friends with a lot of writers and so many of them say how much they hate signings and how they leave after a certain period of time. But what is so hard about sitting there while people tell you how much they love you? And if you don't like it, well, learn to like it. I try to take one person at a time. I never look down the line to see how many more people are left. And I always try to make people talk about something besides whatever they planned to say.

  David Sedaris

  Hate, Love You, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• I was the type of person who was the question-asker. And not just genuine questions, I would ask a question so the author would know how much I knew about them. Once I went to a Tobias Wolff reading. I knew he was teaching at Syracuse at that time. And so, I remember asking him how he liked Syracuse. People do that to me now and it's okay. There is rarely a time when I just have had enough.

  David Sedaris

  Teaching, Reading, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• Performance is really an important part of how I edit. I sometimes take something out because I realize I put in a joke just to be funny and the audience laughed, but I should be ashamed of myself. I sometimes take out sentences, which are perfectly fine on paper, just because they don't flow when I say them out loud. I always read my work out loud now.

  David Sedaris

  Work Out, Important, Sometimes

  Source: therumpus.net

• You need to give the reader a reason to turn the page. In a diary, you are just yourself. You aren't trying to entertain. You aren't trying to get anyone to turn the page. I have over one hundred and fifty six volumes of my diary and I guarantee you that if you read them, you'd stop and never come back.

  David Sedaris

  Giving, Trying, Reason

  Source: therumpus.net

• Humor is necessary - it allows the reader to come up for air before dunking them under again. I need humor and I need it on the page to keep the reader going.

  David Sedaris

  Source: therumpus.net

• No one reads to hear someone complain about the weather or how poorly their children are behaving. You have to give the readers a reason to turn the page. As a writer you have to invite someone to turn the page. And that is a skill you have to refine. That is why you have to read. You have to read to learn what it is that makes people turn the page.

  David Sedaris

  Children, People, Giving

  Source: therumpus.net

• There is a reason there is no such thing as a folk writer. But to be a writer you have learn what it takes to captivate a reader in order to make them turn the page. And in order to learn that, you have to read.

  David Sedaris

  Reason

  Source: therumpus.net

• Sometimes people say, do you want a drink? And I say, oh, I'd like to, but I'm a tragic alcoholic. I always say tragic. I'm a tragic alcoholic.

  David Sedaris

  People, Sometimes, Drink

  Source: www.npr.org

• A lot of people don't know what they want, you know, or they're just kind of vague about it.

  David Sedaris

  People, Kind

  Source: www.npr.org

• I've wasted a lot of time pretending to be interested in people who weren't terribly interesting.

  David Sedaris

  People, Interesting, Pretending

  Source: www.npr.org

• There are certain people in my life who didn't care to be in my book. And so I cut them out. And I had broken up with somebody. And I was, you know, really upset and depressed. And so that was, you know, reasons to keep going.

  David Sedaris

  Book, Cutting, People

  Source: www.npr.org

• You know, when you need drugs and you don't have a lot of money, what you'll do is you'll hang out with people who will give you drugs. Right?

  David Sedaris

  People, Giving, Drug

  "David Sedaris On The Life-Altering And Mundane Pages Of His Old Diaries". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. May 31, 2017.

• There's no such thing as a folk writer. There's no such thing as somebody who's never read a book before suddenly sitting down one day and writing one. You have to learn how to captivate a reader. Right? And I don't mean you have to go to school for it. But if you're - if you pay attention, you can learn it by reading books. And so I feel like I learned a lot by reading books.

  David Sedaris

  Reading, Book, Writing

  "David Sedaris On The Life-Altering And Mundane Pages Of His Old Diaries". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. May 31, 2017.

• And one of the things I noticed pretty early on in art school was that my classmates had no notion of an audience. Right? I mean, growing up with the mother that I did, I learned that when you walk into the dry cleaners, there's an audience waiting for you. You know, maybe it's just the person behind the counter.

  David Sedaris

  Mother, Art, Growing Up

  Source: www.npr.org

• Thank god I'm in England, because if I lived in any other country, it'd probably be the Philippines. Because with Rodrigo Duterte as the leader they couldn't really give me attitude on Donald Trump.

  David Sedaris

  Country, Attitude, Giving

  Source: www.avclub.com

• The good thing about England - like, if I were in France, all people would be doing is rubbing my nose in Donald Trump. As if I voted for him. Just rubbing my nose in him. And in England, they'd be rubbing my nose in it too, except for Brexit. So that means they can't rub my nose in anything!

  David Sedaris

  Mean, People, Good Things

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I wish that I had re-edited 'Theft By Finding' after I did the audio. Because the audio took 40 hours in the studio, and I was standing on my feet. So toward the end of it I'd be looking at certain diary entries and I would think, "Is this really worth my time to read this out loud?" And I would think, "No, it is not." I would have cut out 75 pages, just because I was tired of standing up.

  David Sedaris

  Tired, Cutting, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• You really burden the reader if you put things in but, "Oh, it's not interesting, but I'll put it in anyway." Then the reader's going to think, like, "Mmm... no thanks." So the thing is to cut all that stuff out before its published.

  David Sedaris

  Cutting, Thinking, Interesting

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Now I don't drink, and I get up in the morning and I write in my diary, and I can write in my diary for hours if I feel like it. And I'm still sober so I can write the stories that I'm working on, and I can sit at the desk as long as I need to. So that changed a lot, I think.

  David Sedaris

  Morning, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com