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The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely.

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
Killing
Hour
Completely
Five
Hours
Else
Slowed
Someone
Stopped
Thought
Miles

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A history of listening to Top 40 radio had left me with a ridiculous and clichéd notion of love. I had never entertained the feeling myself but knew that it meant never having to say you're sorry. It was a many-splendored thing. Love was a rose and a hammer. Both blind and all-seeing, it made the world go round.
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In Japanese and Italian, the response to [How are you?] is I'm fine, and you? In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by Not so good.
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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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Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you’ve come to mow its lawns.
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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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Paul Rudnick is a champion of truth (and love and great wicked humor) whom we ignore at our peril.
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He looked as though his life had not only passed him by but paused along the way to spit in his face.
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My family isn't really all that different from anyone else's. Well, maybe they're a bit more entertaining.
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Snowball just leads elves on, elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game.
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I don't like to read anything on the radio for the very first time, because I don't have any notion of a reaction. When I read it out loud, then I get an idea of that, and more of an idea of how to read.
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I'm not a reporter but the 'New Yorker' treats everyone like a reporter.
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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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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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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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Most people, or at least most of the people that I've come into contact with, would like to be written about.
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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 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've often lost faith in myself, I've never lost it in my family.
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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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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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