Quote

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.

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
Thing
Reader
Make
Writer
Turn
Takes
Read
Learn
Captivate
Order
Folk
Reason
Page

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Maybe one day, I would write a story about arguing in public, and those would come in handy in some way.
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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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You really burden the reader if you put things in but, Oh, it's not interesting, but I'll put it in anyway. Then the reader's going to think, like, Mmm... no thanks. So the thing is to cut all that stuff out before its published.
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The things I've bought from strangers in the dark would curl your hair.
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Given enough time, I guess anything can look good. All it has to do is survive.
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You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger.
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I always think it's a good policy to like the people who like you.
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Lovers of audio books learn to live with compromise.
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If finding an apartment is like falling in love, buying one is like proposing on your first date and agreeing not to see each other until the wedding.
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Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.
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I don't think my life is more interesting than anybody else's.
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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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The humor section is the last place an author wants to be. They put your stuff next to collections of Cathy cartoons.
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But I'm a humorist. I'm not a reporter, I never pretended to be a reporter.
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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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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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As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.
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A week after my drugs ran out, I left my bed to perform at the college, deciding at the last minute to skip both the doughnut toss and the march of the headless plush toys. Instead, I just heated up a skillet of plastic soldiers, poured a milkshake over my head and called it a night.
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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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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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