David Sedaris
I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration.
When you read comic material and people aren't laughing how do you know they're listening.
I'm not a reporter but the 'New Yorker' treats everyone like a reporter.
What other people call dark and despairing, I call funny.
I tend to show everything I do to my family, to check they won't be offended.
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.
I sometimes read books on my iPad.
I like listening to books as well, as that way you can iron at the same time.
Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.Collection: Funny Love
Art isn't about following the rules. It's about breaking them.Collection: Art
All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.Collection: Pride
When asked "What do we need to learn this for?" any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness.Collection: Teacher
As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts.Collection: Funny
We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well made cocktail.Collection: Drinking
Sometimes the sins you haven't committed are all you have left to hold onto.Collection: Hipster
Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.Collection: Love You
Weird doors open. People fall into things.Collection: Fall
States vote to take away my marriage rights, and even though I don't want to get married, it tends to hurt my feelings. I guess what bugs me is that it was put to a vote in the first place. If you don't want to marry a homosexual, then don't. But what gives you the right to weigh in on your neighbor's options? It's like voting whether or not redheads should be allowed to celebrate Christmas.Collection: Hurt
Write relentlessly, until you find your voice. Then, use it.Collection: Writing
Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you’ve come to mow its lawns.Collection: Country
Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.Collection: Lying
Living in a foreign country is one of those things that everyone should try at least once. My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world. What I find appealing in life abroad was the inevitable sense of helplessness it would inspire. Equally exciting would be the work involved in overcoming that helplessness. There would be a goal involved, and I like having goals.Collection: Country
If you stepped out of the shower and saw a leprechaun standing at the base of your toilet, would you scream, or would you innately understand that he meant you no harm?Collection: Toilets
As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.Collection: Character
Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.Collection: Character
I'm the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of the people I've never even met.Collection: Numbers
You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger.Collection: Hunger
Oh, for Christ's sake,' I hear. 'Can we please just try to have a good time?' This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn't work. I've tried it.Collection: Trying
All I do is lie, and that has made me immune to compliments.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Children
A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.Collection: Zoos
but I have no mind for business and considered staying awake to be enough of an accomplishment.Collection: Accomplishment
Scream at the mangled leather carcass lying at the foot of the stairs, and my parents would roar with laughter. "That's what you get for leaving your wallet on the kitchen table.Collection: Dog
I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.Collection: Struggle
He's as nutty as a vegan T-bone.Collection: Vegan
The landscape is best described as 'pedestrian hostile.' It's pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head.Collection: Thinking
there's a reason regular people don't appear on TV: we're boring.Collection: People
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.Collection: Hands
High school taught me a valuable lesson about glasses: Don't wear them. Contacts have always seemed like too much work, so instead I just squint, figuring that if something is more than ten feet away, I'll just deal with it when I get there.Collection: School
It's safe to assume that by 2085 guns will be sold in vending machines but you won't be able to smoke anywhere in America.Collection: Gun
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.Collection: Tired
My feet are completely flat, but for most of my life they were still shaped like feet. Now, thanks to bunions, they're shaped more like states, wide boring ones that nobody wants to drive through.Collection: Feet
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.Collection: Cutting
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.Collection: Mother
I hated leaving a hole in the smoking world, and so I recruited someone to take my place. People have given me a lot of grief, but I'm pretty sure that after high school, this girl would have started anyway, especially if she chose the army over community college.Collection: Girl
I needed to temper (my dad's) enthusiasm a bit (about attending Princeton), and so I announced that I would be majoring in patricide...My mom was actually jealous.Collection: Mom
Snowball just leads elves on, elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game.Collection: Games
My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves.Collection: Views
I see you that have a little swimming mouseCollection: Swimming