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People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American.

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
Paris
Critics
American
Often
Another
Find
Harsher
People
Critic
Frightened

More quotes by David Sedaris

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High school taught me a valuable lesson about glasses: Don't wear them. Contacts have always seemed like too much work, so instead I just squint, figuring that if something is more than ten feet away, I'll just deal with it when I get there.
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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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I'm not afraid to write about madness. I always figure that whatever most embarrasses you is something that everyone can relate to, really...because we're just not that different. So if you think, 'Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. I can't possibly talk about that,' and you write about it, the audience is gonna be like, 'that happened to me!
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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.
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If I were president, I would turn the tables and allow the fetus to abort its mother.
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I've often lost faith in myself, I've never lost it in my family.
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What can you say about the family who is suing the railroad after their drunk son was killed walking on the tracks? Trains don't normally sneak up on people. Unless they've derailed, you pretty much know where to find them.
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I just think that the people who say: 'That's not true' when someone tells a story at dinner are the people who didn't get any laughs when they told their story.
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Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.
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I've never made up events, but I've always been a big exaggerator. It's written on my humorist license that I'm allowed to do that.
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If I'm stuck, I get up from my chair and I wash windows. Or... clean the bathroom. Or vacuum the attic. There's always something to be done.
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Because I've always been a fairly nervous person.
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I haven't got 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.
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No one writes dialect better than Flannery O'Connor. No one should even try.
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I didn't know about the rest of the class, but when Bastille Day eventually rolled around, I planned to stay home and clean my oven.
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I felt uncomfortable calling myself a writer until I started with 'The New Yorker,' and then I was like, 'Okay, now you can call yourself that.
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Art isn't about following the rules. It's about breaking them.
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The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.
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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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But I'm a humorist. I'm not a reporter, I never pretended to be a reporter.
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