Passage analysis

“Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.”(Sedaris, pg.140).  

He uses the term real love as in true, full, or literal.  Also, when he says withholding the truth he may mean the truthfulness of the love, or withholding the truth would be telling a lie so as not to hurt their feelings, which is very hard for David because it’s in his nature as he implies with “...offered the perfect opportunity…”.

In addition, the whole statement can be inference to a flashback or a foreshadow.  The statement is clearly a setup for a story he is or already has told about how he had to hold back from telling the truth because it was more important to not hurt someone.  For instance, that fact that he wrote this in the novel means that soon this statement will show his morals or that this statement had already done so.  Furthermore he uses the satire for entertainment and to exaggerate the point he is making.  For example the phrase is used to portray that there is something else that he could do to benefit himself but you shouldn't do it.