"If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary."
— David Sedaris (Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays)

"Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it."
— David Sedaris

"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."
— David Sedaris (Naked)

"I haven't the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out."
— David Sedaris (Naked)

"He took a sip of my father’s weak coffee and spit it back into the mug. "This shit’s like making love in a canoe."
"Excuse me?"
"It’s fucking near water."
— David Sedaris (Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim)

"Shit is the tofu of cursing."
— David Sedaris

"Certain motherfuckers think they can fuck with my shit, but you can't kill the Rooster. You might can fuck him up some times, but, bitch, nobody kills the motherfucking Roster. You know what I'm saying?"
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks."
— David Sedaris

"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."
— David Sedaris (Holidays on Ice)

"If you read someone else's diary, you get what you deserve."
— David Sedaris

"A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit."
— David Sedaris

"Hugh and I have been together for so long that in order to arouse extraordinary passion, we need to engage in physical combat. Once, he hit me on the back of the head with a broken wineglass, and I fell to the floor pretending to be unconscious. That was romantic, or would have been had he rushed to my side rather than stepping over my body to fetch the dustpan."
— David Sedaris (Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim)

"After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations. "
— David Sedaris

"On Undecided Voter​s: "To put them in perspective, I think​ of being​ on an airplane.​ The flight attendant comes​ down the aisle​ with her food cart and, eventually,​ parks​ it beside my seat.​ “Can I inter​est you in the chick​en?​” she asks.​ “Or would​ you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broke​n glass​ in it?”

To be undecided in this elect​ion is to pause​ for a moment and then ask how the chick​en is cooked."
— David Sedaris

"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."
— David Sedaris

"Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable downswing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or you'll run out of dope or liquor and realize that it was all you ever had in common."
— David Sedaris (Naked)

"If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever."
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings"
— David Sedaris (Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim)

"It's just a penis, right? Probably no worse for you than smoking."
— David Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames)

"Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!'"
— David Sedaris

"Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit?"
— David Sedaris

"I love things made out of animals. It's just so funny to think of someone saying, "I need a letter opener. I guess I'll have to kill a deer."
— David Sedaris

"For the first twenty years of my life, I rocked myself to sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but eventually, I had to give it up. Throughout the next twenty-two years I lay still and discovered that after a few minutes I could drop off with no problem. Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it’s funny how sleep just sort of comes on its own. Often I never even made it to the bed. I’d squat down to pet the cat and wake up on the floor eight hours later, having lost a perfectly good excuse to change my clothes. I’m now told that this is not called “going to sleep” but rather “passing out,” a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgment."
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it."
— David Sedaris

"Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't."
— David Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames)

"Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like."
— David Sedaris

"On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned "Lie down," "Shut up," and "Who shit on this carpet?" The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window. "I want me some lamb chop with handles on 'em."
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. "A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection."
— David Sedaris

"On a busy day twenty-two thousand people come to visit Santa, and I was told that it is an elf's lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity. I promised to keep that in mind."
— David Sedaris

"If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt? I accepted the idea that an omniscient God had cast me in his own image and that he watched over me and guided me from one place to the next. The virgin birth, the resurrection, and the countless miracles -my heart expanded to encompass all the wonders and possibilities of the universe.

A bell, though, that's fucked up."
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"I'd hoped the language might come on its own, the way it comes to babies, but people don't talk to foreigners the way they talk to babies. They don't hypnotize you with bright objects and repeat the same words over and over, handing out little treats when you finally say "potty" or "wawa." It got to the point where I'd see a baby in the bakery or grocery store and instinctively ball up my fists, jealous over how easy he had it. I wanted to lie in a French crib and start from scratch, learning the language from the ground floor up. I wanted to be a baby, but instead, I was an adult who talked like one, a spooky man-child demanding more than his fair share of attention.

Rather than admit defeat, I decided to change my goals. I told myself that I'd never really cared about learning the language. My main priority was to get the house in shape. The verbs would come in due time, but until then I needed a comfortable place to hide. "
— David Sedaris

"A week after my drugs ran out, I left my bed to perform at the college, deciding at the last minute to skip both the doughnut toss and the march of the headless plush toys. Instead, I just heated up a skillet of plastic soldiers, poured a milkshake over my head and called it a night."
— David Sedaris

"When a hurricane damaged my father's house, my brother rushed over with a gas grill, three coolers of beer, and an enormous Fuck-It Bucket - a plastic pail filled with jawbreakers and bite-size candy bars. ("When shit brings you, just say 'fuck it,' and eat yourself some motherfucking candy.")"
— David Sedaris

"Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat."
— David Sedaris (Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim)

"The Korean man nodded, the way you do when you’re a foreigner and understand that someone has finished a sentence."
— David Sedaris (Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim)

"May I bring you a drink to go with those warm nuts, Mr. Sedaris?" this woman looking after me asked - this as the people in coach were still boarding. The looks they gave me as they passed were the looks I give when the door of a limousine opens. You always expect to see a movie star, or, at the very least, some better dressed than you, but time and time again it's just a sloppy nobody. Thus the look, which translates to, Fuck you, Sloppy Nobody, for making me turn my head."
— David Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames)

"I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why refer to lady crack pipe or good sir dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?"
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"For as long as I can remember, my father saved. He saves money, he saves disfigured sticks that resemble disfigured celebrities, and most of all, he saves food. Cherry tomatoes, sausage biscuits, the olives plucked from other people's martinis --he hides these things in strange places until they are rotten. And then he eats them."
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"And when Hugh would grow progressively Gandhi on me, I'd remind him that these were pests---disease carriers who feasted upon the dead and then came indoors to dance upon our silverware."
— David Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames)

"Thanks stadium pal!"
— David Sedaris

"Amy adored both the new look and the new person it allowed her to be. Following the photo shoot, she wore her bruises to the dry cleaner and the grocery store. Most people nervously looked away, but on the rare occasions someone would ask what happened, my sister would smile as brightly as possible, saying, 'I'm in love. Can you believe it? I'm finally, totally in love, and I feel great.'"
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"When forced to leave my house for an extended period of time, I take my typewriter with me, and together we endure the wretchedness of passing through the X-ray scanner. The laptops roll merrily down the belt, while I’m instructed to stand aside and open my bag. To me it seems like a normal enough thing to be carrying, but the typewriter’s declining popularity arouses suspicion and I wind up eliciting the sort of reaction one might expect when traveling with a cannon.

‘It’s a typewriter,’ I say. ‘You use it to write angry letters to airport security.’

"
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"In order to get the things I want, it helps me to pretend I’m a figure in a daytime drama, a schemer. Soap opera characters make emphatic pronouncements. They ball up their fists and state their goals out loud. ‘I will destroy Buchanan Enterprises,’ they say. ‘Phoebe Wallingford will pay for what she’s done to our family.’ Walking home with the back half of the twelve-foot ladder, I turned to look in the direction of Hugh’s loft. ‘You will be mine,’ I commanded."
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"As I searched the atlas for somewhere to run to, Hugh made a case for his old stomping grounds. His first suggestion was Beirut, where he went to nursery school. His family left there in the midsixties and moved to the Congo. After that, it was Ethiopia, and then Somalia, all fine places in his opinion.
'Let's save Africa and the Middle East for when I decide to quit living,' I said."
— David Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames)

"Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute."
— David Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames)

"I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself."
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention? To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."
— David Sedaris

"This left me alone to solve the coffee problem - a sort of catch-22, as in order to think straight I need caffeine, and in order to make that happen I need to think straight."
— David Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames)

"I gave my mother a matching set [of mugs] for Christmas, and she accepted them as graciously as possible, announcing that they would make the perfect pet bowls. The mugs were set on the kitchen floor and remained there until the cat chipped a tooth and went on a hunger strike."
— David Sedaris

"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."
— David Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames)