Quote

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.

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
Years
Success
Sudden
Things
Seems
Exposed
Think
Back
Wrote
Thinking
Wanted
Worse
Look
Large
Looks
Wouldn
Choppy
Writing
Started
Embarrassed
Even
Audience
Sooner

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And when Hugh would grow progressively Gandhi on me, I'd remind him that these were pests---disease carriers who feasted upon the dead and then came indoors to dance upon our silverware.
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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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The landscape is best described as 'pedestrian hostile.' It's pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head.
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Such movies are always a danger...falling in love is something most adults have actually experienced...The theme is universal and encourages...unhealthy comparisons...why can't our lives be like that? It's a box left unopened, and its avoidance explains the continued popularity of vampire epics and martial-arts extravaganzas.
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If you are any kind of an artist, then validation . . . can be a result, but you're going to do the work anyway.
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Sometimes you read something and it's just -- it doesn't invite a reader....Sometimes you read something and it's not saying, 'oh come in, come in have a seat. I'm going to tell you what happened.' Perhaps my writing comes off as conversational...and that takes effort.
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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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There are lots of things that happen to me that I don't write about.
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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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Sometimes the sins you haven't committed are all you have to hold on to. If you're really desperate, you might need to grope, saying, for example, I've never killed anyone with a hammer or I've never stolen from anyone who didn't deserve it.
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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?
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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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There are certain people in my life who didn't care to be in my book. And so I cut them out. And I had broken up with somebody. And I was, you know, really upset and depressed. And so that was, you know, reasons to keep going.
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Now I don't drink, and I get up in the morning and I write in my diary, and I can write in my diary for hours if I feel like it. And I'm still sober so I can write the stories that I'm working on, and I can sit at the desk as long as I need to. So that changed a lot, I think.
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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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What can you say about the family who is suing the railroad after their drunk son was killed walking on the tracks? Trains don't normally sneak up on people. Unless they've derailed, you pretty much know where to find them.
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All I do is lie, and that has made me immune to compliments.
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There is a reason there is no such thing as a folk writer. But to be a writer you have learn what it takes to captivate a reader in order to make them turn the page. And in order to learn that, you have to read.
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Art isn't about following the rules. It's about breaking them.
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It is funny the things that run through your mind when you're sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers.
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