David Sedaris Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

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

  David Sedaris

  Book, Writing, Years

• A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Insightful, Stories

  David Sedaris (2010). “Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

• Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Giving, People

• The only real advice you can give anyone is to keep writing.

  David Sedaris

  Real, Writing, Giving

• In America, if your next-door neighbor has a Rolls-Royce, you want one too. But in England, if your neighbor has a Rolls-Royce, you want him to die in a fiery accident. That's a quote from someone else, but there's something about American optimism, that feeling you can do anything if you're at least middle class in America. If I can have a writing career, anyone can. There's nothing special about me.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, America, Doors

• 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

  Writing, Thinking, Identity

  "Ask the Author Live: David Sedaris". The New Yorker Live Chat, www.newyorker.com. August 14, 2009.

• It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I'd written the story. I hadn't-I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It's in there somewhere-but I have to find it. I'll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on.

  David Sedaris

  Depressing, Writing, Thinking

• When forced to leave my house for an extended period of time, I take my typewriter with me, and together we endure the wretchedness of passing through the X-ray scanner. The laptops roll merrily down the belt, while I’m instructed to stand aside and open my bag. To me it seems like a normal enough thing to be carrying, but the typewriter’s declining popularity arouses suspicion and I wind up eliciting the sort of reaction one might expect when traveling with a cannon. It’s a typewriter,’ I say. ‘You use it to write angry letters to airport security.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Airports, Typewriters

  David Sedaris (2000). “Me talk pretty one day”

• 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

  Writing, Scary, Firsts

• I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone.

  David Sedaris

  Morning, Writing, Winning

  "Ask the Author Live: David Sedaris". Interview, www.newyorker.com. August 14, 2009.

• She's afraid to tell me anything important, knowing I'll only turn around and write about it. In my mind, I'm like a friendly junkman, building things from the little pieces of scrap I find here and there, but my family's started to see things differently. Their personal lives are the so-called pieces of scrap I so casually pick up, and they're sick of it. More and more often their stories begin with the line "You have to swear you'll never repeat this." I always promise, but it's generally understood that my word means nothing.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Mean, Knowing

  "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim". Book by David Sedaris, June 1, 2004.

• 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

  Writing, Glee, Watches

  "A life in writing: David Sedaris". Interview with Hadley Freeman, www.theguardian.com. October 11, 2010.

• I've maintained old friendships, like with people I knew in the nineteen-seventies, but have lost the knack for meeting new people. This has a lot to do with my writing schedule. I don't want to be disturbed, and the willingness to be disturbed is, I think, part of being a good friend.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Good Friend, Thinking

  "Ask the Author Live: David Sedaris". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. August 14, 2009.

• I would be writing and trying to write like Joan Didion. Or if I was reading Raymond Carver. You know, strong stylists. But that's how you find your voice, is imitating other people. So things like that didn't embarrass me, because I thought, well, that's how it goes. That's how everyone learns.

  David Sedaris

  Strong, Reading, Writing

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Reserves

• I met a young woman the other day, and she said, what advice would you have for a writer, and I said it would be to work every day... Your job is to write. The rest of it will take care of itself. But, generally, it seems ... you know how that is, you meet people and they have a talent for self-promotion. Those are the pushy people. And you know their writing's not going to be any good, because that's not their talent.

  David Sedaris

  Jobs, Writing, Self

• 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

  Writing, Years, People

• I like high school and college writing textbooks and find them very helpful. Whenever I'm stuck and seem to have no ideas, I open one up and turn to the back. There I'll find questions like, "Have you had any experiences with an alcoholic or a sailor?"

  David Sedaris

  Writing, School, College

  "Ask the Author Live: David Sedaris". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. August 14, 2009.

• I'm so old that when I started keeping a diary they were in actual books, and I think that's one the reasons that I've never written about sex. Because early on you had to worry that someone was going to find your diary, so it's bad enough to be writing like Joan Didion, but writing like Joan Didion about sex acts you'd performed with somebody you had known for 20 minutes, that's a bit worse. So I would write in my diary, "I met J. and we had sex five times last night." But I would never write about what we did.

  David Sedaris

  Book, Writing, Night

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I don't write about sex because it's not really my subject. I love it when other people write about it, but it's not my subject, and I don't want anyone I've had sex with to write about it. Plus, you're in front of an audience, and they picture wherever you're writing about. I'm 52; no one in the audience wants to picture that.

  David Sedaris

  Sex, Writing, People

• No one writes dialect better than Flannery O'Connor. No one should even try.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Trying, Dialect

• There are a lot of college writing textbooks that will include essays and short stories, and after reading the story or essay, there will be questions such as "Have YOU Had any experience with a pedophile in YOUR family?" or "When was the last time you saw YOUR mother drunk?" and they're just really good at prompting stories. You answer the question, and sometimes that can spring into a story.

  David Sedaris

  Mother, Spring, Reading

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. October 8, 2014.

• I started typing diary in, I don't know, 1978 or '79, but then the computer changed that a lot. Because with the computer if you were writing and you realized you had three sentences in a row that started with the word "he," you could fix that right up, whereas on a typewriter you'd think, "Well, I'm not going to change the whole page. It's my diary." So that made a difference.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Thinking, Computer

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I mean, I'm always happy if I have, like, humiliating asshole things that I did. I think: Oh good, that's a good story. Because if you write about humiliating asshole things other people do it doesn't work as well. I mean, you can, but you can get away with it better if you talk about what an asshole you are. It's much easier.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

• I think if you write humor, then people don't - you know - they don't give you that much credit. They tend to think you just dictate your stories into a tape recorder. And I'm not necessarily insulted by that, because I think that just means that it looks easy.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

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