David Sedaris · 275 pages
Rating: (96.6K votes)
“As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“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, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“There’s a short circuit between my brain and my tongue, thus “Leave me the fuck alone” comes out as “Well, maybe. Sure. I guess I can see your point.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“Their house had real hard-cover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“All these young mothers chauffeuring their volcanic three-year-olds through the grocery store. The child's name always sounds vaguely presidental, and he or she tends to act accordingly. "Mommy hears what you're saying about treats," the woman will say, "But right now she needs you to let go of her hair and put the chocolate-covered Life Savers back where they came from."
"No!" screams McKinley or Madison, Kennedy or Lincoln or beet-faced baby Reagan. Looking on, I always want to intervene. "Listen," I'd like to say, "I'm not a parent myself, but I think the best solution at this point is to slap that child across the face. It won't stop its crying, but at least now it'll be doing it for a good reason.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“I should be used to the way Americans dress when traveling, yet it still manages to amaze me. It’s as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge saying, “Fuck this. I’m going to Los Angeles!”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, 'Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl'.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It's not "Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece" but "Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“In Japanese and Italian, the response to ["How are you?"] is "I'm fine, and you?" In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by "Not so good.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“I don't know how these couples do it, spend hours each night tucking their kids in, reading them books about misguided kittens or seals who wear uniforms, and then reread them if the child so orders. In my house, our parents put us to bed with two simple words: "Shut up." That was always the last thing we heard before our lights were turned off. Our artwork did not hang on the refrigerator or anywhere near it, because our parents recognized it for what it was: crap. They did not live in a child's house, we lived in theirs.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“If you stepped out of the shower and saw a leprechaun standing at the base of your toilet, would you scream, or would you innately understand that he meant you no harm?”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“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 on whether or not redheads should be allowed to celebrate Christmas.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“Neighbors would pass, and when they honked I'd remember that I was in my Speedo. Then I'd wrap my towel like a skirt around my waist and remind my sisters that this was not girlish but Egyptian, thank you very much.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“I wasn’t broken, just resting, readying myself for the next big thing.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“Of course, the diary helps me as well. 'That wasn't your position on July 7, 1991,' I'll remind Hugh an hour after we've had a fight. I'd have loved to rebut him sooner, but it takes awhile to look these things up.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“In the Netherlands now, I imagine it's legal to marry your own children. Get them pregnant, and you can abort your unborn grandbabies in a free clinic that used to be a church.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“I thought about this for days, just as I thought of the special-ed teacher I met in Pittsburgh. "You know," I said, "I hear those words and automatically think Handicapped, or, Learning disabled. But aren't a lot of your students just assholes?"
"You got it," she said. Then she told me about a kid - last day of class - who wrote on the blackboard, "Mrs. J____ is a cock master."
I was impressed because I'd never heard that term before. She was impressed because the boy had spelled it correctly.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“There are things you forget naturally-computer passwords, your father's continuing relationship with life-and then there are things you can't forget that you wish you could.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“Don't tell me I don't know how to hate,' I wanted to say. Then I stopped and asked myself, 'Do you really want that to be your message? Think you can out-hate me, asshole? I was fucking hating people before you were even born!”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“I asked her, dreamily, if we had met, and when she told me that we had not, I gave her a little finger wave, the type a leprechaun might offer a pixie who was floating by on a maple leaf. "Well, hi there," I whispered.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“My first boyfriend was black as well, but that doesn't prove I'm color-blind, just that I like big butts.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“It means ‘female dog,’” I’d explained to my sisters, “but it also means ‘a woman who’s crabby and won’t let you be yourself.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“If there'd been anything decent in the house, anything approaching real ice cream, it would have been eaten long ago. I knew this, so I bypassed the freezer in the kitchen and the secondary freezer in the toolshed and went to the neglected, tundralike one in the basement. Behind the chickens bought years earlier on sale, and the roasts encased like chestnuts in blood-tinted frost, I found a tub of ice milk, vanilla-flavored, and the color of pus. It had been frozen for so long that even I, a child, was made to feel old by the price tag. "Thirty-five cents! You can't get naught for that nowadays!”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“Drawing attention to Gretchen's weight was the sort of behavior my mother referred to as 'stirring the turd,' and I did it a lot that summer.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“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 on whether or not redheads should be allowed to celebrate Christmas.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“When it happens to you it's a national tragedy—Why aren't the papers reporting this? you wonder. Only when it happens to someone else do you realize what a dull story it really is.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“You have what we in France call ‘good time teeth,’” she said. “Why on earth would you want to change them?” “Um, because I can floss with the sash to my bathrobe?”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“Then he reached to an even higher shelf and brought down another plastic grocery bag, this one from Tesco, which is decidedly less upscale. “Now, a smell is going to hit you when I open this up, but don’t worry,” he said. “It’s just the smoke they used to preserve the head.” That’s a phrase you don’t hear too often, so it took a moment for it to sink in.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“The iPhone 2 led to the 3, but I didn’t get the 4 or 5 because I’m holding out for the 7, which, I’ve heard on good authority, can also be used as a Taser. This will mean I’ll have just one less thing to carry around.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
David Sedaris
Born place: in Binghamton, New York, The United States
Born date December 26, 1956
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