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When You Are Engulfed in Flames QUOTES

When You Are Engulfed in Flames QUOTES

1 " Sometimes the sins you haven't committed are all you have left to hold onto. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

2 " Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

3 " Oh, for Christ's sake,' I hear. 'Can we please just try to have a good time?' This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn't work. I've tried it. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

4 " The landscape is best described as 'pedestrian hostile.' It's pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

5 " I'm dating myself, but this was before Jesus Christ. We worshiped a God named Sashatiba, who had five eyes, including one on the Adam's apple. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

6 " 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 , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

7 " 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 , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

8 " The houses looked like something a child might draw, a row of shaky squares with triangles on top. Add a door, add two windows. Think of putting a tree in the front yard, and then decide against it because branches aren't worth the trouble. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

9 " I hoped our lives would continue this way forever, but inevitably the past came knocking. Not the good kind that was collectible but the bad kind that had arthritis. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

10 " One year I went as a pirate, but from then on I went as a hobo. It's a word you don't hear anymore. Along with 'tramp,' it's been replaced by 'homeless person,' which isn't the same thing. Unlike someone who was evicted or lost his house in a fire, the hobo roughed it by choice. Being at liberty, unencumbered by bills and mortgages, better suited his drinking schedule, and so he found shelter wherever he could, never a bum, but something much less threatening, a figure of merriment, almost. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

11 " A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

12 " My confessions did nothing to alter this situation, but for the first time in my life I felt that somebody actually knew me. Three somebodies, to be exact. Two were roaming the highway in a Cadillac, doing God knows what with a CB radio, but the other was as close to me as my own skin, and I could now feel the undiluted pleasure of her company. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

13 " It's safe to assume that by 2085 guns will be sold in vending machines but you won't be able to smoke anywhere in America. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

14 " The things I've bought from strangers in the dark would curl your hair. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

15 " 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

16 " 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? "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

17 " Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein's monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, still, you couldn't look at him the same way again. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

18 " I’ve been around for nearly half a century, yet still I’m afraid of everything and everyone. A child sits beside me on a plane and I make conversation, thinking how stupid I must sound. The downstairs neighbors invite me to a party and, after claiming that I have a previous engagement, I spend the entire evening confined to my bed, afraid to walk around because they might hear my footsteps. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

19 " I don't think of myself as overly prissy, but it bothered me to find a finger on my bedroom floor. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames

20 " I wanted it, I wanted it, I wanted it, but the moment it was mine, it ceased to interest me. "

― David Sedaris , When You Are Engulfed in Flames