David Sedaris Quotes

Why do we go through all the nonsense with security at our airport? It's not because the Catholic Church is falling apart.

I hate flying, taking my clothes off, and going through the whole security.

When the day comes, I remember how much I loathe flying. I seethe at the humiliation of airport security checks.

I did learn something interesting [while at the Atlanta airport]. You have to be a member of the TSA in order to legally perform a cavity search. My apologies to the staff of Cinnabon, but you guys should really keep that extra frosting where the customers can find it.

Oh my God, Kennedy Airport - what a mess - all over you with those dopey security questions. 'Did you receive any gifts from any unknown persons?' Buddy, the last thing I got from an unknown person was in the 80's.

Imagine if every airport would blast Brian Eno. I bet going through security wouldn't be as difficult. I can't imagine someone being aggressive with me with Brian Eno music pumping through the terminals at LAX.

Anyone who has had the experience of going through American security checks knows the purpose of these checks is not to make you safer; it's just to annoy you.

Generations of thinkers have made typewriters their frenemies, and long before there were Gmail inboxes, print correspondence stacked up, some hastily written and impulsive on the steel gadgets.

I'm not the biggest fan of airports. I try to arrive a few minutes before check-in closes.

I fly every single week, sometimes up to four days a week, and I see incredible inconsistencies in TSA throughout our country.

Imagine if the political elites in our country were forced to endure the same conditions at the airport as business travelers, families, senior citizens, and the rest of us. Perhaps this problem could be quickly resolved if every cabinet secretary, every member of Congress, and every department head in the Obama administration were forced to submit to the same degrading screening process as the people who pay their salaries.

All I needed was a steady table and a typewriter...a marble-topped bedroom washstand table made a good place; the dining-room table between meals was also suitable.

Airport screeners are now scanning holiday fruitcakes. Not even the scanners can tell what those little red things are.

In the airport, luggage-laden people rush hither and yon through endless corridors, like souls to each of whom the devil has furnished a different, inaccurate map of the escape route from hell.

Look at airport security now. What started out as definite racial profiling is now where the computer picks a name. That's why you get a seven-month-old getting a pat down. [Imitates a security officer.] "Check the diapers. They're full."

People want to say there isn't racial profiling at the airport, but let's be honest. If you first name is Mohammed, and your last name isn't Ali, leave a little extra time.

I'm a little disappointed I didn't get fiddled with by a TSA agent at the airport. I feel unwanted. Maybe next time.

I use an IBM Thinkpad. I just use it like a typewriter, but when I started using it in 1987, I thought I won't be able to write anymore, so I thought I'd go back to the typewriter. But you couldn't go back to the typewriter after using the computer.

It happened again this week. Hundreds of people had to be evacuated from O'Hare Airport in Chicago. Seems every time somebody went through with a weapon, the metal detectors accidentally went off.

There were precisely two groups of people who desperately wanted airport security to be browbeaten into giving suspicious passengers a pass: terrorists and Democrats.

A lot of novelists start late-Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter.

I had more material on weather than anyone else, I guess, ... back when I was traveling a lot on the road as a standup comic, between airport security and the weather... I just wanted to be prepared for sitting in the airport.

Nobody ever thinks clearly at the airport.

It may be annoying, but the rash of hijackings by Connecticut WASP girls surely explains the time-consuming - but still somehow completely useless - examination of my personal effects. We all have to make sacrifices for airline safety.

The TSA's airport body scanners have been shown to be so ineffective, the Homeland Security chairman suggested using traditional metal detectors. While LaGuardia will continue to just have a scarecrow dressed as a cop.