"If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever" - David Sedaris

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After my first official trip to a used book store, I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised with the quality and quantity of books that filled the shelves.  My search for the work by David Sedaris did not take any longer than five minutes, and even cost less than it would have had I bought them on my e-reader.  If you have not read anything by David Sedaris, I am telling you to start.  If you do not like to read for long amounts of time- even better, because his stories are short.  Simply writing about his personal and seemingly average day to day activities, Sedaris adds his own self-depricating, sarcastically honest, socially satirical twist to each story he shares. 

Here are a few answers from an interview I found in TIME magazine (click on the link to read the rest).

You write about your adolescence in vivid detail.  Did you keep a diary?
I've been keeping diaries for 27 years. For the most part, it's just garbage, so I go through them, take whatever's good and make a master list. In the summer of 1984, I've got on June 23 that I saw a drunk woman drop her baby. And then an episode of Oprah that was particularly good on July 3. I used to type my diary and then have it bound. Now I print it out. I do one every season, and it has to have a seasonal cover. It's a lot of work for something no one's ever going to see. 
 
You've written about some of your odd jobs.  Which was the oddest?
I had a job in Chicago — you know when squirrels crawl under the eaves of people's homes and get trapped in the attic and die? I had to crawl on my belly over fiber glass and dead squirrels to staple up screens so that no more squirrels could get in. You realize you're lying on top of a squirrel that's crawling with maggots. It's the kind of job where you just couldn't take enough baths.

You're a noted luddite.  When did you finally give in and get a computer?
My boyfriend got me a computer three years ago. I'll admit it does make things a lot easier. When I was working on a typewriter and I whited out a line, often I would choose a word to go in the space just because it fit. Now I don't have to do that.

And the internet?
I've never seen the Internet. I don't have email. I just enjoy lying on the couch and reading a magazine. When people say, "You should visit my Web page," I'm always perplexed by it. Why? What do you do there?

Here is a video of David Sedaris reading one of his essays on David Letterman.  Enjoy.