David Sedaris Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

  David Sedaris

  Book, Writing, Years

• A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Insightful, Stories

  David Sedaris (2010). “Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

• Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Giving, People

• The only real advice you can give anyone is to keep writing.

  David Sedaris

  Real, Writing, Giving

• In America, if your next-door neighbor has a Rolls-Royce, you want one too. But in England, if your neighbor has a Rolls-Royce, you want him to die in a fiery accident. That's a quote from someone else, but there's something about American optimism, that feeling you can do anything if you're at least middle class in America. If I can have a writing career, anyone can. There's nothing special about me.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, America, Doors

• I started writing one afternoon when I was twenty, and ever since then I have written every day. At first I had to force myself. Then it became part of my identity, and I did it without thinking.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Thinking, Identity

  "Ask the Author Live: David Sedaris". The New Yorker Live Chat, www.newyorker.com. August 14, 2009.

• It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I'd written the story. I hadn't-I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It's in there somewhere-but I have to find it. I'll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on.

  David Sedaris

  Depressing, Writing, Thinking

• When forced to leave my house for an extended period of time, I take my typewriter with me, and together we endure the wretchedness of passing through the X-ray scanner. The laptops roll merrily down the belt, while I’m instructed to stand aside and open my bag. To me it seems like a normal enough thing to be carrying, but the typewriter’s declining popularity arouses suspicion and I wind up eliciting the sort of reaction one might expect when traveling with a cannon. It’s a typewriter,’ I say. ‘You use it to write angry letters to airport security.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Airports, Typewriters

  David Sedaris (2000). “Me talk pretty one day”

• At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Scary, Firsts

• I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone.

  David Sedaris

  Morning, Writing, Winning

  "Ask the Author Live: David Sedaris". Interview, www.newyorker.com. August 14, 2009.

• 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.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Mean, Knowing

  "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim". Book by David Sedaris, June 1, 2004.

• I cry all the time when I watch 'Glee' because I don't know if it's satire or melodrama and that makes me feel like the writing is aware of itself, and that makes it OK to cry.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Glee, Watches

  "A life in writing: David Sedaris". Interview with Hadley Freeman, www.theguardian.com. October 11, 2010.

• Write relentlessly, until you find your voice. Then, use it.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Voice, Use

• Writing helped to have jobs that involved running around, pushing things like dish carts and wheelbarrows. It would be hard to sit at a desk all day, and then come to sit at another desk. Also, it helps to abandon hope. If I sit at my computer, determined to write a New Yorker story I won't get beyond the first sentence. It's better to put no pressure on it. What would happen if I followed the previous sentence with this one, I'll think. If the eighth draft is torture, the first should be fun. At least if you're writing humor.

  David Sedaris

  Running, Jobs, Fun

• There's no such thing as a folk writer. There's no such thing as somebody who's never read a book before suddenly sitting down one day and writing one. You have to learn how to captivate a reader. Right? And I don't mean you have to go to school for it. But if you're - if you pay attention, you can learn it by reading books. And so I feel like I learned a lot by reading books.

  David Sedaris

  Reading, Book, Writing

  "David Sedaris On The Life-Altering And Mundane Pages Of His Old Diaries". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. May 31, 2017.

• When I taught, a lot of my students weren't big readers, so they would write something and I realized that they thought it belonged in a book. Like, they didn't know what the inside of a book looked like, you know what I mean?

  David Sedaris

  Book, Writing, Mean

• I don't worry about being exposed. When I'm writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don't write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  Source: www1.ucsc.edu

• I don't like travelling if I know I have to write about it.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Knows, Ifs

  "Ask the Author Live: David Sedaris". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. August 14, 2009.

• The difference between writing where you know where to draw the line and writing where you're being way too mean is whether you can tell that the writer is not talking to family or friends anymore. Generally, if you say something bad about somebody on stage, you need to say two bad things about yourself. A lot of times, I think I'm the worst person in the room.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

• Maybe one day, I would write a story about arguing in public, and those would come in handy in some way.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, One Day, Arguing

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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

  Sex, Writing, Class

• I tend to write things seven times before I show them to my editor. I write them seven times, then I take them on tour, read them like a dozen times on tour, then go back to the room and rewrite, read and rewrite... I would never show him a first draft, because then he's really going to be sick of it by the twelfth draft.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Editing, Editors

• There are lots of things that happen to me that I don't write about.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Happens

• Whenever I write about my family, I start by getting my parent`s approval. I like to think I write about them with obvious affection. When it comes to the people I'm related to, I consider myself to be very lucky.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Thinking, People

• I started writing when I was twenty. My first book came out when I was thirty-five. But I never expected that it would happen quickly.

  David Sedaris

  Book, Writing, Twenties

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