David Sedaris - When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008)

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I hoped our lives would continue this way forever, but inevitably the past came knocking. Not the good kind that was collectible but the bad kind that had arthritis.

David Sedaris
Art isn't about following the rules. It's about breaking them.

David Sedaris
Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like.

David Sedaris
In books and movies infidelity always looks so compelling, so right. Here are people who defy petty convention and are rewarded with only the tastiest bits of human experience.

David Sedaris
A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.

David Sedaris
They were Jesuits," she told me. "That means they believe in God but not in terlet paper. You should have seen their underwear. Disgusting.

David Sedaris
As I searched the atlas for somewhere to run to, Hugh made a case for his old stomping grounds. His first suggestion was Beirut, where he went to nursery school. His family left there in the midsixties and moved to the Congo. After that, it was Ethiopia, and then Somalia, all fine places in his opinion. 'Let's save Africa and the Middle East for when I decide to quit living,' I said.

David Sedaris
Einstein wrote that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That said, is it crazier to repeatedly throw yourself against a window, or to repeatedly open that window, believing the creatures that are throwing themselves against it might come into your house, take a look around, and leave with no hard feelings?

David Sedaris
It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. "A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection.

David Sedaris
Often I'd take out my magnifying glass and stare into the chaos that was her face.

David Sedaris
Sometimes the sins you haven't committed are all you have left to hold onto.

David Sedaris
I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call "understanding" is basically just fantasizing.

David Sedaris
Given enough time, I guess anything can look good. All it has to do is survive.

David Sedaris
Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein's monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, still, you couldn't look at him the same way again.

David Sedaris
The landscape is best described as 'pedestrian hostile.' It's pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head.

David Sedaris
Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute.

David Sedaris
The things I've bought from strangers in the dark would curl your hair.

David Sedaris
Oh, for Christ's sake,' I hear. 'Can we please just try to have a good time?' This is like ordering someone to find you attractive, and it doesn't work. I've tried it.

David Sedaris
This left me alone to solve the coffee problem - a sort of catch-22, as in order to think straight I need caffeine, and in order to make that happen I need to think straight.

David Sedaris
Cover your glass in France or Germany —even worse, in England - and in the voice of someone who has personally affronted, your host will ask why you're not drinking. 'Oh, I just don't feel like it this morning.' 'Why not?' 'I guess I'm not in the mood?' 'Well, this'll put you in the mood. Here. Drink up.' 'No, really, I'm OK.' 'Just taste it.' 'Actually, I'm sort of...well, I sort of have a problem with it.' 'Then how about half a glass?

David Sedaris
High school taught me a valuable lesson about glasses: Don't wear them. Contacts have always seemed like too much work, so instead I just squint, figuring that if something is more than ten feet away, I'll just deal with it when I get there.

David Sedaris
My feet are completely flat, but for most of my life they were still shaped like feet. Now, thanks to bunions, they're shaped more like states, wide boring ones that nobody wants to drive through.

David Sedaris
Like anyone nostalgic for a time he didn't live through, I chose to weed out the little inconveniences: polio, say, or the thought of eating stewed squirrel. The world was simply grander back then, somehow more civilized, and nicer to look at.

David Sedaris
I hated leaving a hole in the smoking world, and so I recruited someone to take my place. People have given me a lot of grief, but I'm pretty sure that after high school, this girl would have started anyway, especially if she chose the army over community college.

David Sedaris
... name association was big, as were my presumed interests in vaudeville and politics. In St. Louis the Bow tie was characterized as "very Charlie McCarthy", while in Chicago a young man defined it as "the pierced eyebrow of the Republican party".

David Sedaris
This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable.

David Sedaris
It was the look you get when facing a sudden and insurmountable danger: the errant truck, the shaky ladder, the crazy person who pins you to the linoleum and insists, with increasing urgency, that everything you know and love can be undone by a grape.

David Sedaris