I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.
Interpretation
The quote humorously expresses the speaker's recognition of the challenge in changing others, while also playfully admitting to having a list of people they would like to change.
David Sedaris humorously reflects on the complicated nature of trying to change other people. He acknowledges that he lacks a clear strategy for making such changes, yet he keeps an ongoing list of individuals who he thinks could benefit from change, highlighting both the futility and the whimsical desire for improvement in others.
In practice
This quote can be used in a humorous speech about personal growth and relationships.
It's a common mistake for vacationing Americans to assume that everyone around them is French and therefore speaks no English whatsoever. [...] An experienced traveler could have told by looking at my shoes that I wasn't French. And even if I were French, it's not as if English is some mysterious tribal dialect spoken only by anthropologists and a small population of cannibals.
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.
States vote to take away my marriage rights, and even though I don't want to get married, it tends to hurt my feelings. I guess what bugs me is that it was put to a vote in the first place. If you don't want to marry a homosexual, then don't. But what gives you the right to weigh in on your neighbor's options? It's like voting whether or not redheads should be allowed to celebrate Christmas.
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?'
Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!
whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like.
I have to march because my mother could not have an abortion.
Culture does not make people - people make culture. So if it is in fact true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, we must make it our culture. [...] A feminist is a man or a woman who says, 'yes there is a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it. We must do better.'
When it comes to dealing with the world's climate and energy challenges, I have a simple rule: change America, change the world.
When policymakers, financiers and scientists describe the world decades from now, in the throes of climatic changes that we now only model, they emphasize what might be lost.
If I wanted to change the world, the last thing I would do is write a play.
No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens.
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