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But instead I am applying for a job as an elf. Even worse than applying is the very real possibility that I will not be hired, that I couldn't even find work as an elf. That's when you know you're a failure.

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
Even
Worse
Work
Failure
Possibility
Couldn
Instead
Jobs
Find
Applying
Real
Hired

More quotes by David Sedaris

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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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If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever.
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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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Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like.
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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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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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It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters.
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Snowball just leads elves on, elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game.
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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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Lovers of audio books learn to live with compromise.
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I giggled out loud at his stupidity. If anyone knew how to make a bed, it was a faggot.
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In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl.
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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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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 don't really do very well when I'm sent somewhere. A lot of magazines want to send you somewhere to do something. They want you to stow away on a ship, or something like that.
David Sedaris
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As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.
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People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American.
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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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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'm not a reporter but the 'New Yorker' treats everyone like a reporter.
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