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I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

David Sedaris

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David Sedaris
Age: 67
Born: 1956
Born: December 26
Comedian
Essayist
Humorist
Writer
Binghamton
New York
David Raymond Sedaris
Book
First
Seventeen
Writing
Twenty
Years
Twenties
Later
Started
Came
Firsts

More quotes by David Sedaris

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I don't think my life is more interesting than anybody else's.
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I meet people at book signings. My record now, for signing, is ten and a half hours in one sitting.
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It's hard to love a place that's outlawed smoking but finds it perfectly acceptable to serve raw fish in a bath of chocolate.
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God was someone I wound up turning over and over in my mind each night... Was He punishing me with this meal or was He rewarding me? Did He actively watch me or take me for granted like a fish you don't notice until it's floating on the surface of the tank?
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If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever.
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It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters.
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I tend to write things seven times before I show them to my editor. I write them seven times, then I take them on tour, read them like a dozen times on tour, then go back to the room and rewrite, read and rewrite... I would never show him a first draft, because then he's really going to be sick of it by the twelfth draft.
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I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call understanding is basically just fantasizing.
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Because I've always been a fairly nervous person.
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I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone.
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Paul Rudnick is a champion of truth (and love and great wicked humor) whom we ignore at our peril.
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I would be writing and trying to write like Joan Didion. Or if I was reading Raymond Carver. You know, strong stylists. But that's how you find your voice, is imitating other people. So things like that didn't embarrass me, because I thought, well, that's how it goes. That's how everyone learns.
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but I have no mind for business and considered staying awake to be enough of an accomplishment.
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The drama bug strikes hardest with Jews, homosexuals and plump women who wear their hair in bangs. These are people who, for one reason or another, desperately crave attention
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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.
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Hugh consoled me, saying, Don't let it get to you. There are plenty of things you're good at. When asked for some examples, he listed vacuuming and naming stuffed animals. He says he can probably come up with a few more, but he'll need some time to think.
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But I'm a humorist. I'm not a reporter, I never pretended to be a reporter.
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A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.
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When I taught, a lot of my students weren't big readers, so they would write something and I realized that they thought it belonged in a book. Like, they didn't know what the inside of a book looked like, you know what I mean?
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It was the look you get when facing a sudden and insurmountable danger: the errant truck, the shaky ladder, the crazy person who pins you to the linoleum and insists, with increasing urgency, that everything you know and love can be undone by a grape.
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