The Best of Me

by David Sedaris

“Hey,” he or she would say, “this is pretty good.” “Really?” This was my cheap way of getting them to say it again.

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.

With the advent of email, complaining became free.

When I first started writing essays, they were about big, dramatic events, the sort you relate when you meet someone new and are trying to explain to them what made you the person you are. As I get older, I find myself writing about smaller and smaller things. As an exercise it’s much more difficult, and thus—for me, anyway—much more rewarding.

It’s what fortunate couples turn to when their sex life has faded and they’re too pious for affairs.