Last night's lecture by the frequent New Yorker and NPR contributor found him reading from previously published nonfiction and his equally hilarious diary with a pace that paused just for laughter -- and then only to prevent some sort of rupture. In honor of his wry and refined sense of humor, Show and Tell collected ten of his funniest lines. (If it's even possible, they might be funnier without their original context -- or at least weirder.)
The ten best David Sedaris quotes from his night at the Paramount:
10. "In my experience, a straight guy will shit anywhere."
9. "This woman wanted me to write 'Explore your possibilities' in her daughter's book, but that's just not anything I'd ever say. I told her I would keep the word 'explore,' and I wrote, 'Let's explore diabetes with owls.'"
8. "I'm starting to think it's a Greek thing: sitting around in your underpants. They're just so oppressive, and you want to be free of them ... Someone else once told me their dad does the same thing, but he uses his children's old underwear because there's still some wear left in it."
7. "You look back at things like being pinned by the neck. Even when I was hanging there, I thought, 'I can write about this later.'"
6. Courtesy of a faux uber-conservative stance: "If I were president, I would turn the tables and allow the fetus to abort its mother."
The top five are on the next page.
5. "In my day, our parents put us to bed with two simple words: 'Shut up.'"
4. "She told me she owns two Komodo dragons."
3. "You don't ever want to hear 'pray' from a flight attendant."
2. On the house that he and boyfriend Hugh Hamrick would have loved to purchase in England: "Hugh got online and found a house called Faggot Stacks, and it was located between the villages of Balls Cross and Titty Hill."
1. "I told her I was conducting a little poll, and I asked, 'Have you ever shit in your hand?'"
For more Sedaris-like quotes, see the entries in our recentDavid Sedaris ticket contest. Follow us on Twitter!
