I wanted to be a visual artist, but I realized I was more affected by what I read than by what I saw. I would go to a show at a museum and look at a painting and say, 'Oh I wish I owned that,' and that would be the end of my relationship with a painting. With a short story I would read or with an author I would discover I could be haunted. It would affect my mood and affect the way that I saw the world. I thought, wow, it would be amazing to be able to do that.

David Sedaris

Categorized in : World Wish Artist

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.

David Sedaris

funny-love real hurt

States vote to take away my marriage rights, and even though I don't want to get married, it tends to hurt my feelings. I guess what bugs me is that it was put to a vote in the first place. If you don't want to marry a homosexual, then don't. But what gives you the right to weigh in on your neighbor's options? It's like voting whether or not redheads should be allowed to celebrate Christmas.

David Sedaris

hurt rights giving

When asked "What do we need to learn this for?" any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness.

David Sedaris

loneliness teacher school

I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

David Sedaris

life long ideas

I rejected the word humorist for a long time because I thought that it meant you had, like, a cardigan sweater with patches on the elbows, but now I'm old and I do. I grew into that word. I think at heart, all this time, I've been a diarist. I'm not ashamed of it.

David Sedaris

heart long thinking

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

David Sedaris

important love-you people

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

David Sedaris

insightful stories writing

Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute.

David Sedaris

abstract cute people

During episodes of unemployment I find it rewarding to sleep as much as possible-anything from twelve to fourteen hours a day is a good starting point. Sleep spares you humiliation and saves money at the same time: nothing to eat, nothing to buy, just lie back and dream your life away.

David Sedaris

dream sleep lying

Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you’ve come to mow its lawns.

David Sedaris

rude country travel

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

David Sedaris

writing book years

What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it.

David Sedaris

courses hated mind

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.

David Sedaris

important jobs people

Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

David Sedaris

writing giving people

I'm friends with a lot of writers and so many of them say how much they hate signings and how they leave after a certain period of time. But what is so hard about sitting there while people tell you how much they love you? And if you don't like it, well, learn to like it. I try to take one person at a time. I never look down the line to see how many more people are left. And I always try to make people talk about something besides whatever they planned to say.

David Sedaris

hate love-you people

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.

David Sedaris

uncomfortable okay calling

At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me.

David Sedaris

technology tree grieving

Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't.

David Sedaris

writing class sex

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.

David Sedaris

hammers might needs

I won't put in a load of laundry, because the machine is too loud and would drown out other, more significant noises - namely, the shuffling footsteps of the living dead.

David Sedaris

laundry machines noise