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61 " 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. "
― David Sedaris , Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002
62 " The way I saw it, if my students were willing to pretend I was a teacher, the least I could do was return the favor and pretend that they were writers. "
― David Sedaris , Me Talk Pretty One Day
63 " Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like. "
― David Sedaris
64 " 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 , Naked
65 " The walking tour guides one through the city's various landmarks, reciting bits of information the listener might find enlightening. I learned, for example, that in the late 1500s my little neighborhood square was a popular spot for burning people alive. Now lined with a row of small shops, the tradition continues, though in a figurative rather than literal sense. "
66 " My mother was, for the most part, delighted with my brother and regarded him with the bemused curiosity of a brood hen discovering she has hatched a completely different species. 'I think it was very nice of Paul to give me this vase,' she once said, arranging a bouquet of wildflowers into the skull-shaped bong my brother had left on the kitchen table. 'It's nontraditional, but that's the Rooster's way. He's a free spirit, and we're lucky to have him. "
67 " The woman spoke with a heavy western North Carolina accent, which I used to discredit her authority. Here was a person for whom the word 'pen' had two syllables. He people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready-- so who was she to advise me on anything? "
68 " Nobody likes having a problem, but having a convoluted, bureaucratic one is even more galling. "
― David Sedaris , Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
69 " On a busy day twenty-two thousand people come to visit Santa, and I was told that it is an elf's lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity. I promised to keep that in mind. "
70 " Randall, the gay alcoholic in the house next door, boldly peeps through my windows. 'Boy, you sure rock in that chair a lot,' he said last week, his face pressed against my screen. This time I was lying on my bed with Katherine's cats. I'm watching them while she's out of town. I can be very mushy, and he watched me kissing them and saying that all the other cats in the neighborhood were jealous of their beauty. "
71 " I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity. "
72 " My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out over things I didn't do, which only makes me look more suspect. "
― David Sedaris , Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
73 " I would later discover it was a bad idea to gather more than two of these people in an enclosed area for any length of time. The stage was not only a physical place but also a state of mind, and the word audience was defined as anyone forced to suffer your company. We young actors were a string of lightbulbs left burning 24 hours a day, exhausting ourselves and others with our self-proclaimed brilliance. "
74 " Each one of us is left to choose our own quality of life and take pleasure where we find it with the understanding that, like Mom used to say, sooner or later something's gonna get you. "
― David Sedaris , Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays
75 " If some people are “outed,” are other people “inned”? Can we say that someone has been “besided” or “overed”? "
76 " The guilt applies only to those things that are being given away for free. "
77 " He's as nutty as a vegan T-bone. "
78 " It’s not lost on me that I’m so busy recording life, I don’t have time to really live it. "
79 " It's astonishing the amount of time that certain straight people devote to gay sex - trying to determine what goes where and how often. They can't imagine any system outside their own, and seem obsessed with the idea of roles, both in bed and out of it. Who calls whom a bitch? Who cries harder when the cat dies? Which one spends the most time in the bathroom? I guess they think that it's that cut-and-dried, though of course it's not. Hugh might do the cooking, and actually wear an apron while he's at it, but he also chops the firewood, repairs the hot-water heater, and could tear off my arm with no more effort than it takes to uproot a dandelion. "
― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames
80 " Cover your glass in France or Germany --even worse, in England - and in the voice of someone who has personally affronted, your host will ask why you're not drinking. 'Oh, I just don't feel like it this morning.''Why not?''I guess I'm not in the mood?''Well, this'll put you in the mood. Here. Drink up.''No, really, I'm OK.''Just taste it.''Actually, I'm sort of...well, I sort of have a problem with it.''Then how about half a glass? "