David Sedaris

Quotes

1. In other parts of the country people tried to stay together for the sake of the children. In New York they tried to work things out for the sake of the apartment.

2. 

   on genders of nouns: Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?

3. 

   What really interests me are the local gun laws. Can I carry a concealed weapon and, if so, under what circumstances? What's the waiting period for a tommy gun? Could I buy a Glock 17 if I were recently divorced or fired from my job?

   p. 157

4. 

   My mother and I were at the dry cleaner's, standing behind a woman we had never seen.

   "My sister and I are visiting from out of town," the woman said, a little louder now, and again the man nodded. "I'd love to stay awhile longer and explore, but my home—well, one of my homes—is on the garden tour, so I've got to get back to Williamsburg."

   "My home—well, one of my homes": by the end of the day my mother and I had repeated this line no less than fifty times. You had to get it just right, or else the sentence lost its power.

   The first dozen times we tried it, our voices sounded pinched and snobbish, but by midafternoon they had softened.

   "My home—well, one of my homes . . ." My mother said it in a rush, as if she were under pressure to be more specific.

   p. 17

5. 

   "You kids think you invented sex," my mother was fond of saying. But hadn't we? With no instruction manual or federally enforced training period, didn't we all come away feeling we'd discovered something unspeakably modern? What produced in others a feeling of exhilaration left Jason and me with a mortifying sense of guilt. We fled the room as if, in our fumblings, we had uncapped some virus we still might escape if we ran fast enough. Had one of the counselors not caught me scaling the fence, I felt certain I could have made it back to Raleigh by morning, skittering across the surface of the ocean like one of those lizards often featured on television wildlife programs.

   p. 106

6. 

   What did Trish's mother say when her daughter, heartbroken over her breakup with Randy, came to her in search of love and understanding?

   'If you're looking for sympathy you can find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.'

   p. 23

7. 

   'Of course he died,' the window washer said. 'You can't take more than a four-storey fall, not in this town anyway.

   Then Jeffrey Lee got off the phone and said that, given a choice, he'd rather fall from a higher floor as it would allow more time for his life to flash before his eyes.

   The window man said that all depends on the life you led.

   p. 198

8. 

   I Photo Elfed all day for a variety of Santas and it struck me that many of the parents don't allow their children to speak at all. A child sits upon Santa's lap and the parents say, 'All right now, Amber, tell Santa what you want. Tell him you want a Baby Alive and My Pretty Ballerina and that winter coat you saw in the catalog.'

   The parents name the gifts they have already bought. They don't want to hear the word 'pony' or 'television set,' so they talk through the entire visit, placing words in the child's mouth. When the child hops off the lap, the parents address their children, each and every time, with, 'What do you say to Santa?'

   The child says, 'Thank you, Santa.'

   It is sad because you would like to believe that everyone is unique and then they disappoint you every time by being exactly the same, asking for the same things, reciting the exact same lines as though they have been handed a script.

   All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to the fingerprints.

   p. 233

9. 

   Last Christmas I received a set of golf clubs that, my father likes to remind me, cost a goddamned fortune. He says that he would give his right arm for such a beautiful set of clubs.

   p. 27

10. 

    Over Christmas we looked through boxes of family pictures and played a game we call 'Find Mom, find Mom's cigarettes.' There's one in every picture. We've got photos of her pregnant, leaning toward a lit match, and others of her posing with her newborn babies, the smoke forming a halo above our heads. These pictures gave us a warm feeling.

    She smoked in the bathtub, where we'd find her drowned butts lined up in a neat row beside the shampoo bottle. She smoked through meals, and often used her half-empty plate as an ashtray. Mom's theory was that if you cooked the meal and did the dishes, you were allowed to use your plate however you liked.

    p. 191

That’s all the quotes.

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