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.

• I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Tools, Use

  "David Sedaris: 'If you tell a funny story at the dinner table in front of 10 people, nine will laugh, and one will say: that's not true. I've always hated that person'". Interview With Decca Aitkenhead, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2009.

• I'm glad that I didn't have the Internet when I started writing. I started writing when I was 20 and didn't show a word of it to anyone until I was 28. I had the sense to keep it to myself. Now the temptation with blogs and such, they're just getting it out there; maybe it would have been best to keep it to themselves.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Temptation, Internet

• Sometimes you read something and it's just -- it doesn't invite a reader....Sometimes you read something and it's not saying, 'oh come in, come in have a seat. I'm going to tell you what happened.' Perhaps my writing comes off as conversational...and that takes effort.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Effort, Community

• I would start by writing to an adult, maybe a high school teacher, or maybe an aunt or uncle, and writing and telling them why you want to go to a particular university. That's probably what you would actually sound like. Then write your letter to the university, and put those 2 versions in front of you, and look at the difference between those 2 things.

  David Sedaris

  Teacher, Uncles, Writing

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. October 8, 2014.

• I think it just has to do with getting older and getting better at what it was I was doing, and that I could take something small and kind of take my time with it. I think actually what that has to do with is I quit drinking. Before that I told myself I could only drink if I was - if I was writing, I had to be drinking. So I was on a timer, because eventually you get too drunk to write.

  David Sedaris

  Drinking, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Thinking, People

• I think I became a better writer after I started writing for the New Yorker. Well, I know I did. And part of it was having my New Yorker editor and part of it is that was when I started really going on tour and reading things in front of an audience 30 times and then going back in the room and rewriting it and reading it and rewriting it. So you really get the rhythm of the sentences down and you really get the flow down and you get rid of stuff that's not important.

  David Sedaris

  Reading, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.usatoday.com

• I'm not afraid to write about madness. I always figure that whatever most embarrasses you is something that everyone can relate to, really...because we're just not that different. So if you think, 'Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. I can't possibly talk about that,' and you write about it, the audience is gonna be like, 'that happened to me!

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Reality, Thinking

• All of a sudden, when you're exposed to a large audience, they think you just started writing that day, but I started years before. I look back at things I wrote then and I'm so embarrassed - the writing seems so blocky and choppy to me and I wouldn't have wanted success any sooner because the writing was even worse.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Thinking, Years

• Now I don't drink, and I get up in the morning and I write in my diary, and I can write in my diary for hours if I feel like it. And I'm still sober so I can write the stories that I'm working on, and I can sit at the desk as long as I need to. So that changed a lot, I think.

  David Sedaris

  Morning, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• 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.

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