David Sedaris Quotes

I think there are definitely a lot of subjects I don't share with people, but I'm not sure where that border is.

If I am unhappy, I can write "damn it" in my personal diary, but I can't do that on a microblog so I might as well not start one.

I have no memories I'm prepared to share with you.

I often write things, and then I think it's too personal for the Moodies. It's not something that I could share with other guys to say.

I refuse to confide and don't like it when people write about art.

My biggest thing has always been privacy. With an interview such as this where the questions are about me, I struggle to express myself. I have an immediate answer in my head of what I'd say, but sometimes I feel that it would be too honest. So these wheels of censorship start going around my head.

I'm particularly proud of my reluctance to share my dreams with anyone.

I value my privacy a lot.

I advise writing to oneself. If you don't want to read it, nobody else is going to read it.

Sometimes family members will ask to be kept out of certain things that I'm writing, and I try to respect that. I'd much rather have relatives than a book.

There are things about which I don't even talk to myself.

The very idea of printing my diary has always struck me as completely superficial.

The good diarist writes either for himself alone or for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither of affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail, and volume; skill with the pen comes in conveniently, but brilliance is not necessary; genius is a hindrance even; and should you know your business and do it manfully, posterity will let you off mixing with great men, reporting famous affairs, or having lain with the first ladies in the land.

The most important things in our intimate lives can't be discussed with strangers, except in books.

My wife is my first reader, my first line of defence I suppose. So she says, "Oh well, oh yes, it's all true." At the same time, I could have written much more about us, but I didn't want to go any further. I did cut things out. There are certain things that I wrote about her that are so gushing with praise and admiration that when I looked at those passages I realised they would be ridiculous to anybody else.

I think it's very important that you have at least some sort of inner thing you don't talk about. That's why I find it distasteful when all these pop stars talk about their habits.

Of course, I may go into a strange bedroom every now and then that I don't want you to write about, but otherwise you can write everything.

My friend is not allowed to go out today. I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine.

I wasn't quite used to writing a diary - I didn't understand why people did it - but I wrote down notes and they went into a poem.

I kept a diary as a teenager but I never would have shared it with anyone. Still, I think it's very good practice to write things down.

I love writing. I've always written journals. I loved writing the book on living alone.

She's afraid to tell me anything important, knowing I'll only turn around and write about it. In my mind, I'm like a friendly junkman, building things from the little pieces of scrap I find here and there, but my family's started to see things differently. Their personal lives are the so-called pieces of scrap I so casually pick up, and they're sick of it. More and more often their stories begin with the line "You have to swear you'll never repeat this." I always promise, but it's generally understood that my word means nothing.

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

I am ill at ease with people whose lives are an open book.

When you write, you're alone in a room. And when someone reads a book, they're alone in a room, too, usually. It's a really intimate exchange. And so people ask me where I get the boldness to talk about this or that, but I didn't feel like it required any sort of courage, because I was alone. Sometimes it feels weird for people to read it.