David Sedaris Quotes - Page 13

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• I always say to young people, "Get the hell out of the United States." Especially if you're young, like if you're 21 or something. Let's say you don't speak any Italian. You're 21. Everyone's going to want to sleep with you and be nice to you. And the best way to learn a language is to sleep with someone from that country.

  David Sedaris

  Country, Nice, Sleep

  Source: www.usatoday.com

  4 Copy quote

• At the morgue, people were so desensitized that they would eat lunch in the glass walled room adjacent to the autopsy room. A viewing room. Because it had the best air conditioning in the building. So they would eat in there and maybe somebody would come in who had been found after being dead for three days and they would say: That is the exact purple I want for those drapes in the study. They didn't miss a beat. They could eat through anything.

  David Sedaris

  Air, Purple, Lunch

  4 Copy quote

• Traveling across the United States, it's easy to see why Americans are often thought of as stupid. At the San Diego Zoo, right near the primate habitats, there's a display featuring half a dozen life-size gorillas made out of bronze. Posted nearby is a sign reading CAUTION: GORILLA STATUES MAY BE HOT. Everywhere you turn, the obvious is being stated. CANNON MAY BE LOUD. MOVING SIDEWALK IS ABOUT TO END. To people who don't run around suing one another, such signs suggest a crippling lack of intelligence.

  David Sedaris

  Running, Zoos, Stupid

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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• God was someone I wound up turning over and over in my mind each night... Was He punishing me with this meal or was He rewarding me? Did He actively watch me or take me for granted like a fish you don't notice until it's floating on the surface of the tank?

  David Sedaris

  God, Night, Mind

  David Sedaris (2010). “Naked”, p.137, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

• Every so often my life will feel like a story. It doesn't have to be a big thing; in fact, most often, it's just the opposite.

  David Sedaris

  Opposites, Stories, Facts

  4 Copy quote

• The good thing about being gay was always that you didn't have a wedding. People would say, "He's gay, but at least he didn't make us go to his wedding. He didn't make us fly across the country. He didn't make us choose between the fish and the beef."

  David Sedaris

  Country, Gay, People

  "David Sedaris on 'Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls'". Interview with Kevin Nance, articles.chicagotribune.com. April 21, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• It's hard to love a place that's outlawed smoking but finds it perfectly acceptable to serve raw fish in a bath of chocolate.

  David Sedaris

  Smoking, Chocolate, Baths

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

  5 Copy quote

• The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely.

  David Sedaris

  Killing Someone, Hours, Miles

  David Sedaris (2010). “Naked”, p.43, Hachette UK

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Someone told me something recently about Sarah Palin, someone I trusted in the book business. They said, "I worked with Palin. She did an event at my bookstore, and she was really, really nice, and even more beautiful in person." I didn't want to hear that. I wanted to hear that she was awful and hideous-looking. But I thought, I have to listen to that. I have to hear that. I don't want to be the one who is going to deny anything complimentary said about somebody just because I disagree with that person.

  David Sedaris

  Beautiful, Nice, Book

  4 Copy quote

• It makes me wonder sometimes. Remember a couple years ago, when Mexicans went on strike? It was talked about a little bit but not that much. But some old white people, and there aren't even that many, they put bonnets on, and then they control the news.

  David Sedaris

  Couple, Years, White

  4 Copy quote

• I started writing when I was twenty. My first book came out when I was thirty-five. But I never expected that it would happen quickly.

  David Sedaris

  Book, Writing, Twenties

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• 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

  Son, People, Track

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

  4 Copy quote

• The difference between writing where you know where to draw the line and writing where you're being way too mean is whether you can tell that the writer is not talking to family or friends anymore. Generally, if you say something bad about somebody on stage, you need to say two bad things about yourself. A lot of times, I think I'm the worst person in the room.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• When you go to that other country you realize that in France and in England, you don't ask somebody what they do for a living when you meet someone. A lot of the obvious things, the shortcuts we take in America - in America you can talk about money all you want. You can ask how much they make, rent they pay, how much their house costs and how much their car costs, and they'll feel comfortable telling you. But it's scandalous to ask anyone in England or France a question like that.

  David Sedaris

  Country, Obvious Things, America

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• People discuss their relationships all the time, but you can't. I don't think people realize how harmful that is, how it twists you up to hide who you are. It's not healthy, and the great gains that homosexuals have made in my lifetime, I think that we'll look back in twenty or thirty years and say, "I can't believe we ever made them go through that."

  David Sedaris

  Believe, Thinking, Years

  4 Copy quote

• I'm for gay elopement, not for gay weddings. I've been with my boyfriend for twenty years. I don't feel like that would validate our relationship in any way. But I would really fight for someone else to have the right. Just elope, though, please.

  David Sedaris

  Fighting, Gay, Years

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• When you read comic material and people aren't laughing how do you know they're listening.

  David Sedaris

  People, Laughing, Listening

  4 Copy quote

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

  David Sedaris

  Week, Blur, Five

  8 Copy quote

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