694 Quotes by David Sedaris

A Dutch parent has a decidedly hairier story to relate, telling his children, “Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before going to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming tonight along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you into a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don’t know for sure, but we want you to be prepared.

I don’t worry about being exposed. When I’m writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don’t write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary.

Often I’d take out my magnifying glass and stare into the chaos that was her face.

I’ve been keeping diaries for 27 years.

When I got back to the apartment, the phone rang. It was Dad, who told me I should try to get work as a model. I told him he was being ridiculous and he said no, he’d just been at the barbershop and saw a GQ magazine with a guy on the cover who looked just like me. So I went to the newsstand and found a copy and the person on the cover was not a model but Gary Oldman.

Eventually I would set him straight, but until then, at least for another few seconds, I wanted to stay in this happy place. So loved and protected. So fulfilled.

On a recent flight from Tokyo to Beijing, at around the time that my lunch tray was taken away, I remembered that I needed to learn Mandarin. “Goddamnit,” I whispered. “I knew I forgot something.

Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it’s funny how sleep sort of just comes.

Why is it some people can manage a thing like a Fitbit, while others go off the rails and allow it to rule, and perhaps even ruin, their lives?