When I call up David Sedaris at his home in the UK it’s midnight, his time, and he’s busy listening to a book on tape—The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer— and cutting up photos to paste in his diary, a habit of his. Far from being sleepy, however, the acclaimed memoirist/essayist/speaker is as talkative and as forthcoming as both his readers and podcast listeners have come to expect. He took a break to talk about his writing process, his favorite line from literature, unique gifts from fans and the fact that he really does want to talk to his readers (really!), among other musings, in preview of his stop at the Harvard Book Store to read from Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls on June 7.

Are you usually up this late?
Yes, I usually go to bed around 2 am.

So, do you usually write late at night or early in the morning—or is simply when the inspiration strikes?
I get up and I go right to my desk. I work until like, 1:30, and then I go back for an hour at 8.

So you work pretty steadily throughout the day, then..
Yeah, I mean, I never have to force myself. I never think, “Oh, I forgot to go to my desk today!” [laughs] I just get up and go right there.

That leads into my next question: As such a prolific writer, do you ever hit a wall where you just think ‘God, I feel like I’ve run out of ideas?’
I think I don’t know any writers who don’t feel that from time to time. You know, when you’re convinced that you don’t have another word to say. But then—I finished a story last week, and then I found something that I wrote two years ago that I just got frustrated with, and I just put it away. It had just been kind of buried for two years. I pulled it out and I thought, ‘Oh, I know how to do this.’ Sometimes you just need time away from something. Other times, you don’t, you can just turn something right around. But sometimes, you need to put it away and then you can see it.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk was a marked departure from your usual style. How was it taking a break from writing personal essays to do something so different?
I wrote it over the course of six or seven years. So I would write just a few of them [short stories] a year, and I would just put it in a file. And then, one day I thought, ‘Oh, that file is kind of big, it feels big enough for a book.’ What I liked about writing those was writing in the third person. You know, giving it a bit more distance. Because sometimes I listen to other people—like this novel I’m listening to now—and I think, ‘God, she’s so wise.’ Like, how do people get like that? But sometimes I think that if you write in the third person instead of the first person, a lot of times those observations just kind of come out in a way that they don’t if you’re writing in the first person. Because you don’t want to sound show-offy… Well, I don’t know. Sometimes you just take a step back and you speak through a turtle instead of through yourself. And then maybe you have insights that you didn’t realize you had.

Speaking to reading other writers, something that I find is, if I’m reading something really good— sometimes when reading your books—I feel almost frustrated, like, ‘Damn, I’ll never be that good,’ and feel almost…jealous. Do you ever feel that way, reading another writer you really admire?
You know, I have to say that I never felt that way. I mean, I read things all the time and think, “Oh, I’ll never be as good as this person.” But, I don’t know, I guess I just don’t phrase it that way. I think I feel just grateful that that person is in the world. I feel so grateful that that person is alive, and writing, and they can inspire people. I don’t get jealous of them. I think it took me a while to realize…I think when you’re a young writer, you imitate other people. You know, it’s just part of it. And I think it took me a while to realize that you just come to peace with the fact that you will never be those people, and think, ‘Well, OK. That’s something that this person does, and this person was seemingly born to do. And I have this over here that I do.’ So, I think it was just coming to terms with that.

That’s a good way of looking at it.
I remember when my first book came out, I went to my hometown, and I was in a bookstore giving a reading, and this woman who lived in the house next door to me growing up said, ‘That’s fine, but when are you gong to write something serious?’ And I looked at her and I said, ‘Never!’ And it felt so good! [laughs] It felt so good to say that. Because I would spend a lot of time over at her house growing up and I really got exposed to a lot at her house. She had books that we didn’t have in our house. And they made a profound impact on me. But by the time my first book came out, I had sort of stopped pretending to be other people. You know, I just sort of kind of found a niche for myself, and kind of accepted that this was the writer that I am. I accepted it.

Do you think that writing can be taught? I mean, past being taught to be a grammatically sound writer. Or do you think that it’s just something you have to be born with?
Oh gosh, I heard this somewhere the other day—I don’t know if it was a podcast or what—but I think maybe they were talking about visual art, and they said that ‘Art can’t be taught, but it can be learned.’ And I thought, ‘If you got rid of the word ‘art’ you could just put anything in there.’ Writing can’t be taught, but it can be learned. I mean, I guess I feel like a clever person will learn about writing by reading. You know? A clever person will, at one point, say, ‘Why did this make me feel something? And this over here did not make me feel something? And why did I feel suspense here? And over here, in this other book, I didn’t?’ I think it’s important for an observant person to be around bad writing, or amateur writing, too. You know, to learn from that. I mean I think you learn from other people’s mistakes just the same way you can learn from something that’s great. But that said, I mean I basically just had one teacher, and he taught me an awful lot—just basic things. Like, you need to indent when someone’s talking. [laughs]

I taught for a brief while…And sometimes you meet someone and you can just tell if they’re the real thing or not. Sometimes they’re young, and they’re just in that kind of an awkward phase or something, but you still see it, you can still tell. That’s why it makes me sad sometimes when I see somebody who’s, like, a talented painter, and she’s young. And then it’s like, she listened to those people who said, ‘You need to have something to fall back on.’ So now she’s back in school for something to fall back on. And I want to say, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t fall back. You’re really good. Why don’t you stop listening to your parents? You’re 25 years old. What do you need with a brand new car? What do you need with stuff?’

You do a lot of personal essay writing and you have never made any apologies about being, in a way, fairly self-absorbed—albeit self-aware—in your writing. I think that colors a lot of the humor. Do you think that this kind of writing is sort of, by nature, an exercise in self-absorption?
I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think it makes a difference whether you’re writing about a fictional doctor, or what happened to you yesterday. I mean, I think that both of them are equally… I don’t know if self-absorbed is the right word. What’s the word I’m looking for? So you created a doctor, you’re writing about a fictional doctor saving someone’s life, how is that any more self-absorbed than writing about somebody who knocked on your door the day before yesterday trying to sell you some furniture?

I guess what I meant was, “self-absorbed” in the sense that you have confidence that the mundane happenings of your life are interesting enough to write about…
I guess the thing is, sometimes you sit down and write about something, and you say, ‘OK, why would anybody care about this?’ Right? And then you think, ‘OK, well, I have to write about it in a way that people can relate to it.’ I mean, maybe you haven’t been to Sweden. But you have found yourself, oh, I don’t know, going to a place where you decided before you even got there that you love it. And you so need it to love you back. You know? And you’re going to be devastated if it doesn’t. So, Sweden is neither here nor there. I guess I write about stuff all the time that hasn’t happened to anyone, but I don’t know, I usually have a clue that people might find it funny or interesting. I don’t know if that’s instinct, or, you know, sometimes you tell a story around the dinner table and everybody laughs. And you think, ‘I could get four people to laugh, maybe an audience will laugh too.’

On that note, I imagine you have some dedicated fans. What’s the weirdest thing a fan has ever given to you, or said to you?
I just finished a tour of the UK. I was signing books, and I met a couple—they’re 62, I believe, man and wife—and they both lost their right legs in the same car accident.

Wow.
Now, they didn’t give me anything. [laughs] They told me that. But that was pretty remarkable. Gosh, I’m trying to think. Somebody gave me a human heart that she crocheted. And it was the size of it that made it so remarkable to me. You know, that it’s the size of a heart. I was so touched because she put so much work into it. And she really did a good job.

Was it very realistic?
Well, as realistic as it can be when it’s crocheted … I was reading through an old diary this morning from 2010. And there was a letter, and I think it was somebody who wanted something from me, but the guy who wrote it was going about it the wrong way. He had been to a reading that I gave, and I had given him a condom. He’d been a teenager and, at that time—I always have gifts for teenagers—but for awhile, I was giving teenagers condoms. Because they’re light, they’re easy to pack…

And they can use them!
Exactly. That was my understanding. I didn’t want to embarrass him. It just makes people laugh. Anyway, maybe there was something he’d wanted to talk about when he got up there, and he felt slighted, which…surprised me. Because I don’t feel like I’ve ever slighted anyone when they’ve come up to get a book signed. I know I’ve never said ‘Next!’ or “Well, look, there are a lot of other people in line behind you.; I’ve never done that. Never. Every so often, you’ll get somebody who maybe will talk for like, 10 minutes, which is a long time. You know what I mean? But even then, I would never say anything. There have been times when the book store people have come up and said to that person, ‘All right, we need to move it along now.’ And I am mortified. And I always say to that person, ‘No, no, no, you stay as long as you want to.’ So it surprised me that this person felt like I slighted him. In his words, I just kind of threw a condom at him and said, ‘Next!,’ which I know for a fact didn’t happen. But it made me realize that I always liked signing books because I felt like I was in control. And then I thought, ‘I’m not in control at all.’ People are bringing all kinds of stuff with them to the table. I don’t mean physical objects, I mean expectations, and prejudices, and I can’t control that. There was this young man and this young woman, and I remember them clearly, they were the last people in line in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was their wedding anniversary. She got him tickets for his wedding anniversary, and I wrote in his book, ‘You deserve better than this.’ And what I meant was, I was putting myself down. Like, ‘You deserve better than me for your anniversary.’ And he wrote me a letter, furious, saying ‘How dare you? We waited in line, and then you insult me, and you say I deserve better than my wife? Who the f–k are you?

There’s got to be some kind of metaphor in all that. For writing in general, or art in general, or…human relationships in general? I don’t know, there’s something there.
[laughs] Well, I remember there wasn’t really a bookstore in Raleigh, North Carolina when I lived there. I mean, there was a Walden Books in the mall, but there wasn’t, like, a real bookstore. Then I moved to Chicago and there was a bookstore down the street from me. And I couldn’t believe the authors who came there—real authors would come there. Tobias Wolff, and Richard Ford. I couldn’t believe that I could go and see them in person. And it was a lot of money for me to buy a book, even a paperback. And I just remember standing in line and I’m thinking, ‘What am I going to say?’ And then the author didn’t even look at me. She was talking to somebody else, her publicist or something, and didn’t even look. She just signed the book and pushed it back. And I just thought, you know, when it’s me, and it’s my book, and I’m sitting at that table…it’s going to be different.

Well, it’s great that you still adhere to that, that you haven’t become jaded. Because I’m sure there are a lot of writers who start out feeling that way but lose it.
Maybe. I don’t know—I seriously enjoy it. I mean, I genuinely enjoy it, I don’t look beyond the person who’s in front of me. Maybe I should.

There’s another metaphor. I think that not looking past the person in front of you is a pretty good way of approaching life, not just book signings.
You’re right. I mean, when I go to the grocery store I don’t want to be one of those people who doesn’t talk to a cashier. But I also don’t want to say, ‘Boy, we sure could use some rain.’ I don’t want to be that person either. I want to have a genuine exchange, and I want them to know that I’m human, and I want to know that they are. I just did my tour of the UK, and English people don’t ask questions as readily as an American audience will. So, I ask if there are any questions, and nobody raises their hand. And I ran my mouth for a while and, finally, a woman put up her hand and she said, ‘Do you have mice?’

Mice?
Yeah, and I thought, ‘This is such a good question.’ It’s great. I use it at supermarket all the time now. To the cashier, I say, ‘Do you have mice?’ And they either have mice, or they don’t!

I’m sorry; do you mean mice as pets? Or mice infesting their homes?
Infesting their home. [laughs] It’s such a good question.

Ah. So what did you say when she asked you that?
It was great because I told her that we had some mice in London. The woman next door to us died, and they’re redoing her house, and she had never had anything done to her house. And her house is attached to my house and when they started doing work, all the mice fled over to our house. And that was fine. I can be fine with mice. But then they started chewing through the wires. And then that’s when it was war!

Just a few more questions: Do you have a favorite line from literature?
Gosh, a favorite line from a book. Oh, gosh. Yes. “The monks of old slept in their coffins.” That’s from the Flannery O’Connor story—“The Life You Save May Be Your Own.”

What do you like about it?
Well, if somebody is just kind of offering it up, it’s just, like, a little piece of wisdom. [laughs] So that’s how I use it. And I say it…I probably say it like four or five times a year. Like, if I’m with you, and all of a sudden we’ve run out of things to talk about, I’ll say, ‘The monks of old slept in their coffins.’

It’s a conversation starter, I suppose.
Or if we see a casket, I’ll say ‘The monks of old slept in their coffins.’ [laughs]

On the flip side, is there a line in literature that people over-quote that really annoys you?
Oh, gosh. I mean, it’s not a line from literature, but one thing that drives me crazy is when people say ‘What you don’t ask, you don’t get.’ I think that is just absolutely the wrong approach. Because people like to give other people opportunities and sometimes, when you ask, then it’s like, they didn’t trust you to offer it, or to have good judgment. I don’t know. I never sent anybody anything. I never sent a story to anyone, I never went to a place and asked if I could read aloud there, never. My motto was “Let them ask me.” And I put myself out there so they could ask me, but I never asked anyone for anything. And, I don’t know, I think it’s a good approach. I really do. Sometimes, when I go on a lecture tour, somebody from a local NPR station will introduce me. And sometimes I get there, and there’s no one to introduce me. And what I like to do is to find a teenager, and then I pay the teenager $20 to introduce me.

That’s funny. Do you tell them what to say?
Nope. Well, I say, ‘If you get out there, and if you tell them that we met five minutes ago, and that I paid you $20 to introduce me, they’re going to laugh. And you’re going to see what that feels like. You’re going to see what 1800 people laughing feels like. And then you just go with it. Do whatever you want, if you have stuff you want to talk about. You’ll eventually call me, say my name, and I’ll come out.’ And it’s interesting, because sometimes, backstage, the kid will be a little cocky, and then they get out there and they just freak out. But it’s fun because they’ll come with their parents, I’ll say, ‘No, don’t tell your parents. Just come backstage with me.’ And so the show starts and the parents are thinking, like, you know, ‘Where’s Teresa?’ And then she walks out on stage and the parents are shocked. But then what started happening is that people would write and say ‘I know you’re coming to Rochester next week. Can I introduce you?’ And it’s like [sighs] the whole point, the point was not that you’d have a week to write something. The whole point is that you’d have five minutes before you went up there. And the whole point, too, is that it’s my idea! [laughs]

David Sedaris is at the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, June 7 @ 5 pm, tickets $19.50; include paperback copy of book, harvard.com.