David Sedaris

"on genders of nouns: Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?"

"Of course he died, the window washer said. You cant take more than a four-storey fall, not in this town anyway. Then Jeffrey Lee got off the phone and said that, given a choice, hed rather fall from a higher floor as it would allow more time for his life to flash before his eyes. The window man said that all depends on the life you led."

"It occurred to me that everything we buy has been poked or packaged by some unfortunate nitwit with a hairnet and a wad of cotton stuffed into his ears. Every ear of corn, every chocolate-coated raisin or shoelace. Every barbeque tong, paper hat, and store-bought mitten arrives with a history of abject misery. Vegetarians look at a pork roast thinking about the animal. Id now look at them wondering whose job it was to package the shallow Styrofoam trays."

"If I had one wish, Id wish for an unlimited amount of wishes, I said. She shook her head in a way that suggested she had heard this answer countless times before. Dont get greedy on me, Dave, you only get one wish."

"Because I was lazy, Id adopted the philosophy that things just happen."

"For the first twenty years of my life I rocked myself to sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but eventually I had to give it up. Throughout the next twenty-two years I lay still and discovered that after a few minutes I could drop off with no problem. Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and its funny how sleep just sort of comes on its own. Often I never even make it to bed. Id squat down to pet the cat and wake up on the floor eight hours later, having lost a perfectly good excuse to change my clothes. Im now told that this is not called "going to sleep" but rather "passing out," a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgment."

"What did Trishs mother say when her daughter, heartbroken over her breakup with Randy, came to her in search of love and understanding? If youre looking for sympathy you can find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary."

"If cooking is an art, I think were in our Dada phase."

"Over Christmas we looked through boxes of family pictures and played a game we call Find Mom, find Moms cigarettes. Theres one in every picture. Weve got photos of her pregnant, leaning toward a lit match, and others of her posing with her newborn babies, the smoke forming a halo above our heads. These pictures gave us a warm feeling. She smoked in the bathtub, where wed find her drowned butts lined up in a neat row beside the shampoo bottle. She smoked through meals, and often used her half-empty plate as an ashtray. Moms theory was that if you cooked the meal and did the dishes, you were allowed to use your plate however you liked."

"They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgeable in the fields of plumbing and electricity."

"Her face was like the weather in one of those places with no discernible seasons."

"In the coming years our father would continue to promise what he couldnt deliver, and in time we grew to think of him as an actor auditioning for the role of a benevolent millionaire. Hed never get the part but liked the way the words felt in his mouth."