David Sedaris Quotes - Page 12

The walking tour guides one through the city's various landmarks, reciting bits of information the listener might find enlightening. I learned, for example, that in the late 1500s my little neighborhood square was a popular spot for burning people alive. Now lined with a row of small shops, the tradition continues, though in a figurative rather than literal sense.

In my dream world gay people in America would get the right to marry, and not a one of them would use that right.

But instead I am applying for a job as an elf. Even worse than applying is the very real possibility that I will not be hired, that I couldn't even find work as an elf. That's when you know you're a failure.

There are lots of things that happen to me that I don't write about.

To say that a humorist exaggerates to get big laughs, I don't see how that's big news.

I like listening to books as well, as that way you can iron at the same time.

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

I don't think my life is more interesting than anybody else's.

I always knew I wanted it to be illustrated.

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

Because I've always been a fairly nervous person.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think I became a better writer after I started writing for the New Yorker. Well, I know I did. And part of it was having my New Yorker editor and part of it is that was when I started really going on tour and reading things in front of an audience 30 times and then going back in the room and rewriting it and reading it and rewriting it. So you really get the rhythm of the sentences down and you really get the flow down and you get rid of stuff that's not important.

I don't worry about being exposed. When I'm writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don't write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary.

The difference between the first time I read something and the tenth time I read something is generally pretty profound. Even if the script is the same, just the way that I read it is different.

The interesting thing about gay people is that you can't really put on a wedding without them. They're the ones who make your dress, and do the flowers and the catering. They've toiled in the wedding industry all these years but were never allowed to do it themselves.

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."

You meet people who say, "Oh, I'd like to do such-and-such, but I don't have the time." But it always seemed to me like you make the time. And if you have a wife or a job, if you have kids or whatever, you find a way. If you really want to do it, you make the time.

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.

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.

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.

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