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I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen.

David Sedaris

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David Sedaris
Age: 68
Born: 1956
Born: December 26
Comedian
Essayist
Humorist
Writer
Binghamton
New York
David Raymond Sedaris
Like
Jobs
Fathom
People
Someone
Sounding
Seems
Convert
Wells
Missionary
Come
Whose
Well
Listen
Important
Seem
Things
Rather

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You really burden the reader if you put things in but, Oh, it's not interesting, but I'll put it in anyway. Then the reader's going to think, like, Mmm... no thanks. So the thing is to cut all that stuff out before its published.
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I cry all the time when I watch 'Glee' because I don't know if it's satire or melodrama and that makes me feel like the writing is aware of itself, and that makes it OK to cry.
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I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like.
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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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When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.
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No one writes dialect better than Flannery O'Connor. No one should even try.
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Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit?
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Sometimes with 'The New Yorker,' they have grammar rules that just don't feel right in my mouth.
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I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.
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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.
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Say what you will about the south, but in North Carolina a hot dog is free to swing anyway it wishes.
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If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever.
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If finding an apartment is like falling in love, buying one is like proposing on your first date and agreeing not to see each other until the wedding.
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... [I] recall thinking that the computer would never advance much further than this. Call me naïve, but I seemed to have underestimated the universal desire to sit in a hard plastic chair and stare at a screen until your eyes cross.
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Of course, the diary helps me as well. 'That wasn't your position on July 7, 1991,' I'll remind Hugh an hour after we've had a fight. I'd have loved to rebut him sooner, but it takes awhile to look these things up.
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I always think it's a good policy to like the people who like you.
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Maybe one day, I would write a story about arguing in public, and those would come in handy in some way.
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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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whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like.
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I can't promise I'll never kill anyone again, he once said, strapping a refrigerator to his back. It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters
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