Like anyone nostalgic for a time he didn’t live through, I chose to weed out the little inconveniences: polio, say, or the thought of eating stewed squirrel. The world was simply grander back then, somehow more civilized, and nicer to look at.
When apple-picking season ended, I got a job in a packing plant and gravitated toward short stories, which I could read during my break and reflect upon for the remainder of my shift. A good one would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.
I noticed my mother’s face assume an expression she reserved for unspeakable horror. I had seen this look only twice before: once when she was caught in the path of a charging, rabid pig and then again when I told her I wanted a peach-colored velveteen blazer with matching slacks.
The Artist’s impressions of a walk in the woods. The Artist’s view on viewing. The Artist on Art. How do you get your ideas for stories, Mr. Valentine? Well, I simply exploit everything I come into contact with. One ended, of course, by losing all spontaneity. You saw people as characters, sunsets as an excuse for similes –.
I didn’t need a fifteen-minute conversation, just some human interaction. It can be had, and easily: a gesture, a joke, something that says, “I live in this world too.” I think of it as a switch that turns someone from a profession to a person, and it works both ways. “I’m not just a vehicle for my wallet!” I sometimes want to scream.
I had that in my mouth ten minutes ago and now it’s a private part?
If you read an essay in Esquire and don’t like it, there could be something wrong with the essay. If it’s in The New Yorker, on the other hand, and you don’t like it, there’s something wrong with you.
Following a brief period of hard-won independence she came to appreciate the fact that people aren’t foolish as much as they are kind. Peg understood that at a relatively early age. Me, it took years.
Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it’s funny how sleep sort of just comes.
I had discovered, or rediscoverd, that crying is a pleasure – that it can be a pleasure beyond all reckoning if your head is pressed in your mother’s waist and her hands are on your back, and if she happens to be wearing clean clothes.
How does someone undress you with his eyes when you’re already undressed?” I asked. “By that point what’s he looking at, your soul?
This afternoon’s Radio 4 quiz show included the line “One in three Americans weighs as much as the other two.
A man can beat his wife with car antennas, can trade his children for drugs or motorcycles, but still, when he finally, mercifully, dies, his survivors will have to hear from some know-nothing at the post-funeral dinner that he did his best. This, I’m guessing, is based on the premise that we all give 110 percent all the time, regarding everything: our careers, our relationships, the attention we pay to our appearance, etc.
Regardless of whether you voted for him, I thought the president-elect’s identity as a despicable human being was something we could all agree on. I mean, he pretty much ran on it.
Black female security officer at the Charlotte airport: How you doing, sweetheart? Me: That’s so nice of you to call me sweetheart. Her: All right, baby. Keep it safe.
One day I’ll wish I had a recording of Gretchen that I could play when I start feeling sorry for myself. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a more enthusiastic person. Her key, I think, is that she’s never stopped being interested in things. She’s never decided that everything reminds her of something else, that everything worthwhile has been crossed off her list.
It’s nothing I’d want for myself, but I suppose it’s fine for those who prefer food and family to things of real value.
There are few greater pleasures than feeling proud of someone, of worrying you might burst with it, especially if that someone is related to you and therefore part of your organization. I’ve always thought of my family that way, as a company. What’s good for one of us is good for all of us. Our jobs are to advance the name Sedaris.
By this point it was 2:58, and I was starting to panic, thinking, I guess, that if I didn’t give the money away by 3:16, the God I claim not to believe in, the one whose only son was used to sell nails in one of my favorite jokes, was going to smite me.
No surprises, no practical jokes, nothing unexpected, but a parent can’t control everything, and there’s a world of backfiring cars and their human equivalents.
Sometimes things happen and I don’t know what to do with my face.