Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

by David Sedaris

This was for me one of those adult moments involving a choice. Do you shrug your shoulders and say, “I couldn’t get it to work either,” or do you tell the woman she spent the weekend trying to open a wine bottle with the broken knob to the dishwasher?

I’m not sure if he was legally required to introduce himself like this or if it was his own idea. Either way, it was a case of honesty getting you nowhere.

They were geometric designs, the kind people sketch when they’re trapped on the phone with a relative or, possibly, a parole officer.

He called us a number of names I’ve only recently come to understand, and then he banged on our neighbor’s door and insulted her as well.

England, one says, “Put a sock in it.” The phrase originated in the early part of the century. Gramophones had no volume control, so to lower the music, you put a sock in the horn.

She was in her mid-twenties, and attractive. The first thing I noticed was her beautiful shoulder-length hair. Then I realized that she had

By the end of the afternoon all I’d bought were two plums and a pizza that came topped with canned peas, corn, and diced potatoes.

I got a letter from my father and realized it’s only the second one he’s ever sent.

which isn’t a question you’d expect from a stranger, or from anyone, really.

experienced one of those moments of extreme joy, the kind that result from something small and make you grateful that you never committed suicide.

“See that flag?” he asked, pointing off into the distance. I did. It was the same size it is on a stamp. That’s how far away it was.

If you see devils, they lock you up, but in America, if you see angels, they put you on morning TV.

I wished I could go back in time and give these people shoes and beds and sackfuls of rice.

Last night at nine I was in a theater at Les Halles watching The Talented Mr. Ripley and this morning at nine I was lying on a hospital gurney with an IV in my arm. At eight a.m. I was fine and then, wham,

The drugs they gave me at the hospital were delicious and served in an IV. The effect was immediate, like turning off a spigot.

It seems inevitable that everyone eventually will have a computer, but I’d hoped to put it off as long as possible.

On a typewriter, when you run out of things to say, you get up and clean the bathtub.

They wore the same lost, dopey expressions I wear half the time in Paris.

Why Go to High School When You Can Go to School High

I Say No to Drugs but They Don’t Listen

Out of My Mind—Back in Five Minutes

Occasionally, when tourists ask for the nonsmoking section, the waiter will remove the ashtray from their table and say, “Voilà!” Tonight the waiter simply shrugged, so it was up to the Americans to clear the air themselves.

who is fifty-two and could easily pass for a guy trying to pass himself off as a woman.

“There’s a reason they make belts and wallets out of those things,” she said. “They’re tough as shit. You ever try to decapitate a rattler with a shovel?”

Realtors can no longer advertise that a house is located within walking distance of a school—it’s unfair to childless couples. Family room offends the singles, and master bedroom smacks of slavery.

I’ve got two self-improvement campaigns going on at the same time, and luckily they seem compatible.

The bar, or series of bars, encircles the courtyard restaurant, and passing from one area to the next, I realized that I’d never seen such a good-looking group of people in my life. There were no exceptions. As David said, the place made the recent Prada and Gucci ads seem like documentary footage. This was a gene-pool convention, an ark of beauty.

we ran over to the Tuileries and shot pellet rifles, pretending the balloons were our own physical flaws.

He had to apologize for leaving a tip and basically beg to be forgiven.

Whenever I have nothing to say, I wind up with two characters talking over one another.

One woman seemed to know her way around better than the others and advised everyone that a trip to Caen would definitely cut into their day. She must have said the phrase “cut into the day” at least a dozen times.

August 19, 2000 Alghero, Sardinia My suspicion that the four stars beside the name of the Hotel Carlos V were decorations turned out to be correct.

When Dario drove us into the city of Alghero, Hugh said, “Oh, it looks just like Mogadishu.” I haven’t been to Mogadishu, so to me it resembles Utah but with a beach.

the landscape here strikes me as mean. It’s dry and dusty and full of things that can hurt you.

The women behind us, all in their fifties with dark, leathery skin, rattled on and I guessed they were trashing somebody. When people speak Italian, I always imagine that they’re either gossiping or relating the details of a close race.

the only souvenir of my vacation will be the scrapes and bruises I sustained during last night’s bike accident.

We were the only Americans except for the people on TV.

In order to smoke, one had to step out onto the playground. A family sat on the far end of the slide, both the parents and the teenagers puffing away.

Hugh is thinking we can exploit our location and make money renting out our apartment under the name Finnegans Sleep.

The keys to the city don’t really count if you have to ask for them yourself, but H. went ahead and wrote to the mayor.

You get the idea people would leave if they could only sell their houses and summon up the energy to pack.

I imagine the mall started going downhill when it accepted Walmart as a tenant. Anything you could find at Bill’s Card Shop and the Record Bin could also be found there, where a customer could pay less and buy everything in one shot.

To the neighbors it must have looked as though I were trying to break in and write about it at the same time, and I worried that one of them might call the police.

Who ever thought the presidential election would come down to the number of people you’d find in a movie theater? It might be resolved tonight, but I doubt it.

Bringing ordinary children into the smoking lounge is enough to earn you glares, but a baby in a wheelchair could possibly lead to a lynching.

For the past week, Hugh has been painting for Diane Johnson, and the potato amounted to two days’ worth of work.

the story she told involved his mother, a pile of cocaine, and a group of men dressed in lavalavas.

The book seemed to lift people’s spirits, and as a result, the hospital has made it recommended reading. I’m not sure whether I believe this, but it’s extremely flattering to think my book is being passed around a German asylum.

The mattress is too hard for my taste and I woke up with a sore jaw, having dreamed I’d been hit by a car.

I’d thought the store was for travelers who wanted to pick up a few things on the way home, but it’s actually a way around the Swiss blue laws demanding that shops close from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. The laws apply everywhere but the airport, so they built a massive supermarket in the Swiss Air terminal. “It’s the place to be on a Sunday,” the woman said.