Quotes from Naked

“I haven't the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well made cocktail.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable downswing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or you'll run out of dope or liquor and realize that it was all you ever had in common.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“College is the best thing that can ever happen to you," my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking..”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“I was a smart-ass, born and raised. This had been my curse and would continue to be so.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“I giggled out loud at his stupidity. If anyone knew how to make a bed, it was a faggot.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“I've always had a way with the little people, making it a point to humor them without looking down my nose at their wasted empty lives.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“I’d always been afraid of sick people, and so had my mother. It wasn’t that we feared catching their brain aneurysm or accidentally ripping out their IV. I think it was their fortitude that frightened us. Sick people reminded us not of what we had, but of what we lacked. Everything we said sounded petty and insignificant; our complaints paled in the face of theirs, and without our complaints, there was nothing to say.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“Motherfucker, you try that again and I'll come in there with a fucking coat hanger and give you something to fucking kick about”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“If nothing else, life in the suburbs promised that you might go from day to day without finding shit in your hair.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“We give anonymously because the sackfuls of thank-you letters break our hearts with their clumsy handwriting and hopeless phonetic spelling.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“He has a passport," my classmates would whisper. "Quick, let's run before he judges us!”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“Right, I breast feed baby camels in my backyard just for the freaking fun of it. Just tell me where you live, Pinocchio, and save the baloney for lunch.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“Watching him was like opening the door to a siniging telegram; you know it's supposed to be entertaining, but you can't get beyond the sad fact that this person actually thinks he bringing some joy into your life. Somewhere he had a mother who sifted through a shoe box of mimeographed playbills, pouring herself another drink and wondering when her son would come to his senses and swallow some drain cleaner.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“Motherfucker, you haven't got the fucking balls God gave a goddamned church mouse. You crawled out of your mama's tattered old pussy, grabbed hold of her milk stained titties, and you ain't never looked back, motherfucker.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“They're hungry for something they know nothing about, but we, we know all too well that the price of fame is the loss of privacy.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for _who_ I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions who hate you for _what_ you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks. I haven't got the slightest idea of how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“You just take and take don´t you? Out there with your thumb in the air—not a care in the world, just grabbing whatever you can get. Yes, sir, you just take and take until you´re ready to burst. But what about giving? Did you ever think about that? Of course not—you´re too busy taking, Mr. Handout, Mr. Gimmee, Gimmee, Gimmee. Me, I´m what you call a ´taxpayer.´ Tax, it´s a... tariff that working people have to pay so that someone like yourself can enjoy a life of leisure. I give and give until I´ve got nothing left! Nothing! Then I turn around and give some more. I give and I give to all of Uncle Sam´s little takers, every last one of you, but what´s in it for me? I´ve been thinking that maybe it´s time I get a little something in retum. Yes, indeed, maybe it´s about time we try that shoe on the other foot for a change. You, my young friend, are going to wash my car inside and out. And you´re going to pay for it!”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“What are you, tap dancing up there? You want a put on a show, do you? Well, the theater's closed for the night. Take your act on the road; it's four o'clock in the morning,goddamnit.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“the beauty of an art school: as long as you can pay the tuition, they will never, even in the gentlest way, suggest that you have no talent.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“You have how many children in your family?" the teacher would ask. "I'm guessing you must be Catholic, am I right?”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“The thing to remeber is that more than anything in this world, these colored people wish they were white.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“The whole notion of the nursing home was something dreamed up by people like my mother; American women with sunglasses, always searching for their tanning lotion or cigarette lighters.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“Someone in our family had taken to wiping his or her ass on the bath towels. What made this exceptionally disturbing was that all our towels were fudge-colored. You’d be drying your hair when, too late, you noticed an unmistakable odor on your hands, head, and face.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

“the lower bunks, both of us longing to be pinned. “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?”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked

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Popular quotes

“Per quanto contraddittorio possa sembrare, non c’è nulla di più vero che chi ha sempre fatto la scelta giusta non sa nemmeno la metà sulla natura e i modi di operare la scelta giusta, di chi ha fatto le scelte sbagliate.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from A Pair of Blue Eyes

“Decades of destruction, suppression, genocide, sterilization, and political indoctrination could not break the Tibetans’ will for freedom, or their deep-rooted religious beliefs. On”
― Heinrich Harrer, quote from Seven Years in Tibet (Paladin Books)

“Alberto caminaba de vuelta a su casa, ensimismado, aturdido. El invierno moribundo se despedía de Miraflores con una súbita neblina que se había instalado a media altura, entre la tierra y la cresta de los árboles de la avenida Larco: al atravesarla, las luces de los faroles se debilitaban, la neblina estaba en todas partes ahora, envolviendo y disolviendo objetos, personas, recuerdos: los rostros de Arana y el Jaguar, las cuadras, las consignas, perdían actualidad y, en cambio, un olvidado grupo de muchachos y muchachas volvía a su memoria, él conversaba con esas imágenes de sueño en el pequeño cuadrilátero de hierba de la esquina de Diego Ferré y nada parecía haber cambiado, el lenguaje y los gestos le eran familiares, la vida parecía tan armoniosa y tolerable, el tiempo avanzaba sin sobresaltos, dulce y excitante como los ojos oscuros de esa muchacha desconocida que bromeaba con él cordialmente, una muchacha pequeña y suave, de voz clara y cabellos negros”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Time of the Hero

“Of the things I had not known when I started out, I think the most important was the degree to which the legacy of the McCarthy period still lived. It had been almost seven years since Joe McCarthy had been censured when John Kennedy took office, and most people believed that his hold on Washington was over. ... among the top Democrats, against whom the issue of being soft on Communism might be used, and among the Republicans, who might well use the charge, it was still live ammunition. ...

McCarthyism still lingered ... The real McCarthyism went deeper in the American grain than most people wanted to admit ... The Republicans’ long, arid period out of office [twenty years, ended by the Eisenhower administration], accentuated by Truman’s 1948 defeat of Dewey, had permitted the out-party in its desperation, to accuse the leaders of the governing party of treason. The Democrats, in the wake of the relentless sustained attacks on Truman and Acheson over their policies in Asia, came to believe that they had lost the White House when they lost China. Long after McCarthy himself was gone, the fear of being accused of being soft on Communism lingered among the Democratic leaders. The Republicans had, of course, offered no alternative policy on China (the last thing they had wanted to do was suggest sending American boys to fight for China) and indeed there was no policy to offer, for China was never ours, events there were well outside our control, and our feudal proxies had been swept away by the forces of history. But in the political darkness of the time it had been easy to blame the Democrats for the ebb and flow of history.

The fear generated in those days lasted a long time, and Vietnam was to be something of an instant replay after China. The memory of the fall of China and what it did to the Democrats, was, I think, more bitter for Lyndon Johnson than it was for John Kennedy. Johnson, taking over after Kennedy was murdered and after the Kennedy patched-up advisory commitment had failed, vowed that he was not going to be the President of the United States who lost the Great Society because he lost Saigon. In the end it would take the tragedy of the Vietnam War and the election of Richard Nixon (the only political figure who could probably go to China without being Red-baited by Richard Nixon) to exorcise those demons, and to open the door to China.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Best and the Brightest

“It was sort of my own personal apocalypse.”
― Nick Cole, quote from The Old Man and the Wasteland

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.