David Sedaris

Honestly, though, does choice ever come into it? Is it my fault that the good times fade to nothing while the bad ones burn forever bright? Memory aside, the negative just makes for a better story: the plane was delayed, an infection set in, outlaws arrived and reduced the schoolhouse to ashes. Happiness is harder to put into words. It's also harder to source, much more mysterious than anger or sorrow, which come to me promptly, whenever I summon them, and remain long after I've begged them to leave.

Dad on friendship: "Sure, some people are nice. Real nice. Nice like carpets so you can walk all over them."

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.

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.

Something has changed, and now, when I look at my students, I see only people who are going to eat up my time.

In 1976 Dawn Erickson taught me that, in order to ensure good luck, you're supposed to say, "Rabbit, rabbit," on the first day of every month. It has to be the very first thing that comes out of your mouth and you have to say it out loud or else it doesn't work. I'd never been particularly superstitious, but ever since she told me, I've made it a point to follow her example.

Adrienne started teaching a few months ago in Denver and wrote that it leaves you with a constant feeling of deceiving people. That you know nothing they don't, or couldn't learn on their own if they cared to.

I thought I'd get a coffee and take it outdoors, but just as I approached, a boy swooped in and began mixing himself a cup of hot chocolate.

It was a complicated business, mixing a cup of hot chocolate. You had to spread the powdered cocoa from one end of the table to the other and use as many stirrers as possible, making sure to thoroughly chew the wetted ends before tossing them upon the stack of unused napkins. This is what I like about children: complete attention to one detail and complete disregard of another.

In first class, you count on your fellow passengers to make you feel good about yourself. You're supposed to look around with pride, telling yourself that these are your kind of people.

Harry Rowohlt, the fellow who translated my book into German and is reading with me on my tour, told me that when someone on the bus or at a nearby table in a restaurant talks on a cell phone, he likes to lean over and shout, "Come back to bed, I'm freezing."

On several occasions during my visit, she referred to herself as poor, and that depressed me. Most people would say they're broke. That word suggests a temporary setback. Poor, on the other hand, conveys a permanence.

If you talk to people, you can have whatever you want.