Quote

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?

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
Inside
Writing
Belonged
Something
Taught
Readers
Would
Bigs
Weren
Like
Write
Realized
Didn
Looked
Thought
Reader
Book
Students
Mean

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there's a reason regular people don't appear on TV: we're boring.
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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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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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If you stepped out of the shower and saw a leprechaun standing at the base of your toilet, would you scream, or would you innately understand that he meant you no harm?
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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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We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well made cocktail.
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It makes me wonder sometimes. Remember a couple years ago, when Mexicans went on strike? It was talked about a little bit but not that much. But some old white people, and there aren't even that many, they put bonnets on, and then they control the news.
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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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Perhaps the little Negro girl was holding a concealed razor blade. Maybe she was one of the troublemakers out for a fresh white scalp.
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The interesting thing about gay people is that you can't really put on a wedding without them. They're the ones who make your dress, and do the flowers and the catering. They've toiled in the wedding industry all these years but were never allowed to do it themselves.
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I think if you write humor, then people don't - you know - they don't give you that much credit. They tend to think you just dictate your stories into a tape recorder. And I'm not necessarily insulted by that, because I think that just means that it looks easy.
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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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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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The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I've discovered it can work miracles as long as you keep telling yourself, I want to love, I want to live.
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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 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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The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate.
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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.
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