Al David Quotes

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

Sometimes with 'The New Yorker,' they have grammar rules that just don't feel right in my mouth.

I didn't know about the rest of the class, but when Bastille Day eventually rolled around, I planned to stay home and clean my oven.

I like books on tape, and will listen to just about anything.

I sometimes read books on my iPad.

There is still the outside world to contend with. A world of backfiring cars, and their human equivalents.

Perhaps the little Negro girl was holding a concealed razor blade. Maybe she was one of the troublemakers out for a fresh white scalp.

Say what you will about the south, but in North Carolina a hot dog is free to swing anyway it wishes.

There are lots of things that happen to me that I don't write about.

I like to reserve the right to write about whatever I like.

It hardly seemed fair, because, unlike a horse or a Seeing Eye dog, the whole glory of being a bird is that nobody would ever put you to work.

When they're born outside, crows come and pluck their eyes out.

I just think that the people who say: 'That's not true' when someone tells a story at dinner are the people who didn't get any laughs when they told their story.

Every so often my life will feel like a story. It doesn't have to be a big thing; in fact, most often, it's just the opposite.

To say that a humorist exaggerates to get big laughs, I don't see how that's big news.

The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I've discovered it can work miracles as long as you keep telling yourself, "I want to love, I want to live.

The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely.

I needed to temper (my dad's) enthusiasm a bit (about attending Princeton), and so I announced that I would be majoring in patricide...My mom was actually jealous.

When you read comic material and people aren't laughing how do you know they're listening.

I don't think my life is more interesting than anybody else's.

...clatter of a typwriter suggests that you're actually building something.

I see you that have a little swimming mouse

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.

whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like.

I can't promise I'll never kill anyone again," he once said, strapping a refrigerator to his back. "It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters

At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.

I had to wrestle daily with both my inadequacy and my uncontrollable jealousy. I didn't want to kill her, but hoped someone else might do the job for me.

The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain old-fashioned fear.

People ask me, 'Have you ever considered doing stand-up?' To me it would be less offensive if someone asked me, 'Have you ever considered dental implants?'

I don't like being left to my own thoughts.

Maybe one day, I would write a story about arguing in public, and those would come in handy in some way.

Thank god I'm in England, because if I lived in any other country, it'd probably be the Philippines. Because with Rodrigo Duterte as the leader they couldn't really give me attitude on Donald Trump.

I spend so much time like living in the past or the future. I mean, I think most people do, really. And the moments when you're really present in your life can be pretty rare, really.

A lot of people don't know what they want, you know, or they're just kind of vague about it.

I've wasted a lot of time pretending to be interested in people who weren't terribly interesting.

I meet people at book signings. My record now, for signing, is ten and a half hours in one sitting.

Also, I used to think that one day I might get someone to iron my shirts, but the truth is I really like doing them myself.

Humor is necessary - it allows the reader to come up for air before dunking them under again. I need humor and I need it on the page to keep the reader going.

Sometimes people say, do you want a drink? And I say, oh, I'd like to, but I'm a tragic alcoholic. I always say tragic. I'm a tragic alcoholic.

In the Netherlands now, I imagine it's legal to marry your own children. Get them pregnant, and you can abort your unborn grandbabies in a free clinic that used to be a church.

In Paris you're always surrounded by French people.

On one tour, I was collecting stories about pet monkeys. You'd be surprised how many people have stories about monkeys. The problem is, most monkey stories end tragically.

They're hungry for something they know nothing about, but we, we know all too well that the price of fame is the loss of privacy.

I always knew I wanted it to be illustrated.

Because I've always been a fairly nervous person.

I like listening to books as well, as that way you can iron at the same time.

there's a reason regular people don't appear on TV: we're boring.

I tend to show everything I do to my family, to check they won't be offended.

College is the best thing that can ever happen to you," my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking.

I've always had a way with the little people, making it a point to humor them without looking down my nose at their wasted empty lives.