I attributed their behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV, but television didn't teach you everything. Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable. This was one of the things you were supposed to learn simply by being alive, and it angered me that the Tom keys did not understand it.

— David Sedaris

I don’t know why it was, exactly, but nothing irritated my father quite like the sound of his children’s happiness. Group crying, he could stand, but group laughing was asking for it, especially at the dinner table.

— David Sedaris

I'd think it strange that the boardinghouse attracted both him and me, but that's what cheap places do -- draw in people with no money. An apartment of my own was unthinkable at that time of my life, and even if I'd found an affordable one it wouldn't have satisfied my fundamental need to live in a communal past, or what I imagined the past to be like: a world full of antiques.

— David Sedaris

I'd tried to straighten him out, but there's only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer.

— David Sedaris

If I'm walking down an American street and anyone darker than a peanut shell approaches, I'll say, "Hello." This because, if I don't say it, he or she might think that I'm anxious. Which, of course, I must be, otherwise I'd walk by in silence, just as I do with my fellow Caucasians. Does this make me racist, or simply race conscious? Either way, I'm more afraid of conservatives than I am of black people.

— David Sedaris

I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.

— David Sedaris

If some people are “outed,” are other people “inner”? Can we say that someone has been “beside” or “covered”?

— David Sedaris

If you are any kind of artist, then validation … can be a result, but you’re going to do the work anyway. Because you’re just wired that way. It’s so engrained, it’s such a part of your personality that you don’t just stop doing it.

— David Sedaris

If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever.

— David Sedaris

If you read someone else's diary, you get what you deserve.

— David Sedaris