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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.

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
Think
Humor
Thinking
Written
People
Stuff
Look
Looks
Hard
Amateur
Writing
Sign
Trying
Older

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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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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 started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.
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Snowball just leads elves on, elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game.
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Do I exaggerate? Boy, do I, and I'd do it more if I could get away with it.
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I've maintained old friendships, like with people I knew in the nineteen-seventies, but have lost the knack for meeting new people. This has a lot to do with my writing schedule. I don't want to be disturbed, and the willingness to be disturbed is, I think, part of being a good friend.
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My sister's the type who religiously watches the fear segments of her local Eyewitness News broadcasts, retaining nothing but the headline...Everything is dangerous all of the time, and if it's not yet been pulled off the shelves, then it's certainly under investigation -- so there.
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I needed to temper (my dad's) enthusiasm a bit (about attending Princeton), and so I announced that I would be majoring in patricide...My mom was actually jealous.
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The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain old-fashioned fear.
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I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.
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All of a sudden, when you're exposed to a large audience, they think you just started writing that day, but I started years before. I look back at things I wrote then and I'm so embarrassed - the writing seems so blocky and choppy to me and I wouldn't have wanted success any sooner because the writing was even worse.
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It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection.
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I hated leaving a hole in the smoking world, and so I recruited someone to take my place. People have given me a lot of grief, but I'm pretty sure that after high school, this girl would have started anyway, especially if she chose the army over community college.
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I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like.
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Every so often my life will feel like a story. It doesn't have to be a big thing in fact, most often, it's just the opposite.
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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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If I were president, I would turn the tables and allow the fetus to abort its mother.
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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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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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Sometimes with 'The New Yorker,' they have grammar rules that just don't feel right in my mouth.
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