David Rakoff
David Rakoff
David Benjamin Rakoffwas a Canadian-born American writer based in New York City, who was noted for his humorous and sometimes autobiographical non-fiction essays. Rakoff was an essayist, journalist, and actor, and a regular contributor to WBEZ's This American Life. Rakoff described himself as a "New York writer" who also happened to be a "Canadian writer", a "mega Jewish writer", a "gay writer", and an "East Asian Studies major who has forgotten most of his Japanese" writer...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth27 November 1964
CountryCanada
David Rakoff quotes about
I am neither spontaneous nor ready for anything.
I am going to the bad place, as is my wont.
Simplicity, it seems, has always been wasted on those who simply cannot appreciate it
I find life itself provides ample and sufficient tests of my valor and mettle: illness; betrayal; fruitless searches for love; working for the abusive, the insane, and the despotic. All challenges easily as thrilling to me as scrambling over icy rock in a pair of barely adequate boots.
Youth is not wasted on the young, it is perpetrated on the young.
In my brief glimpse of what is to come I realize how little I care to witness it. I have seen the future and I'm fairly relieved to say, it looks nothing like me.
Is there some lesson on how to be friends? I think what it means is that central to living a life that is good is a life that's forgiving. We're creatures of contact regardless of whether we kiss or we wound. Still, we must come together. Though it may spell destruction, we still ask for more-- since it beats staying dry but so lonely on shore. So we make ourselves open while knowing full well it's essentially saying "please, come pierce my shell.
I had a tumor. But it was great.
I have managed to establish an identity that is based on my internal self, and for that I feel tremendously lucky.
In the window, I fantasize... about providing grown-ups and children alike with the greatest gift of all: insight...
Just think, the shoes I wouldn’t be caught dead in might actually turn out to be the shoes I am caught dead in.
Central to living a life that is good, is a life that's forgiving.
Unfortunately, there's no greater rhyme or reason as to why it would be me. And since there is no answer as to why me, it's not a question I feel really entitled to ask.
There is nothing so cleansing or reassuring as a vicarious sadness.