If you read someone else’s diary, you get what you deserve.

Sedaris’s line is a dry moral warning disguised as a punchline: violating someone’s privacy is not a harmless curiosity but an ethical breach that invites consequences. The “you get what you deserve” framing flips the usual sympathy—rather than pitying the snooper for what they might discover, it holds them responsible for any discomfort, shock, or guilt that follows. Implicitly, the quote defends the diary as a private space for unfiltered thought, not a document written for public judgment. It also reflects Sedaris’s comic sensibility: a blunt, commonsense verdict delivered with deadpan finality, turning a taboo act into a neat moral equation.