When I was seven years old, my family moved to North Carolina. When he was seven years old, Hugh’s family moved to the Congo. We had a collie and a house cat. They had a monkey and two horses named Charlie Brown and Satan. I threw stones at stop signs. Hugh threw stones at crocodiles. The verbs are the same, but he definitely wins the prize when it comes to nouns and objects.

— David Sedaris

David Sedaris Quotes

I’m sad to be finishing school. I liked being in college. It was respectable to be a student. You get discount admissions all over town, and it makes you work.

— David Sedaris

The younger an ingredient, the more highly it was valued, thus the baby chicken, the baby spinach, the newborn asparagus, each pale stalk as slender as a fang.

— David Sedaris

I might reinvent myself to strangers, but to this day, as far as my family is concerned, I’m still the one most likely to set your house on fire.

— David Sedaris

I got into the express line behind a middle-aged man in a T-shirt. I never saw the front of it, but the back pictured a Labrador retriever standing on the beach with a bikini top in his mouth. Below him were the words GOOD DOG. Some people, I thought, opening the wet wipes so I could wash the tumor off my hands before I touched my wallet.

— David Sedaris

Were it not for Sorry! I’d never have known that Kathy’s mother shot a kitten in the head.

— David Sedaris

Why is it some people can manage a thing like a Fitbit, while others go off the rails and allow it to rule, and perhaps even ruin, their lives?

— David Sedaris

At what point had I realized that class couldn’t save you, that addiction or mental illness didn’t care whether you’d taken piano lessons or spent a summer in Europe? Which drunk or junkie or unmedicated schizophrenic was I crossing the street to avoid when I put it all together?

— David Sedaris

I’m often misunderstood at my supermarket in Sussex, not because of my accent but because I tend to deviate from the script. Cashier: Hello, how are you this evening? Me: Has your house ever been burgled? Cashier: What? Me: Your house – has anyone ever broken into it and stolen things? With me, people aren’t thinking What did you say? so much as Why are you saying that?

— David Sedaris

We’re like a pair of bad trapeze artists, reaching for each other’s hands and missing every time.

— David Sedaris

I can manage in a restaurant, take a cab, and even make small talk with the driver. “Do you have children?” I ask. “Will you take a vacation this year?” “Where to?” When he turns it around, as Japanese cabdrivers are inclined to do, I tell him that I have three children, a big boy and two little girls. If Pimsleur included “I am a middle-aged homosexual and thus make do with a niece I never see and a very small godson,” I’d say that. In the meantime, I work with what I have.

— David Sedaris

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.

— David Sedaris

I’m pretty sure I could tumble down all the stairs in the Empire State Building, naked, with a greased-up pepper grinder in each hand, and a box of candles around my neck, and still end up in the lobby with an empty rectum.

— David Sedaris

Did you just tell that lady you’re a doctor?” Amy would ask. “A little,” I’d say.

— David Sedaris

Our mother became the living ghost that haunted it, gaunt now and rattling ice cubes instead of chains.

— David Sedaris

It wasn’t where they belonged, necessarily. It was just where they ended up.

— David Sedaris

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.

— David Sedaris

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.

— David Sedaris

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 –.

— David Sedaris

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.

— David Sedaris

I had that in my mouth ten minutes ago and now it’s a private part?

— David Sedaris
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