Quotes from Augusten Burroughs

I had always had the oddest feeling, consider it knowledge, that if I were ever to find myself inside the cockpit of a 767 with two dead piolets and afew hundred passengers in the cabin behind me, I would absolutely be able to land the ninety-thousand-pound jet.

You need to grab your dream out of the sky like it's a kite and pinch the string through your fingers until you reach the spool.

Freedom was what we had. Nobody told us when to go to bed. Nobody told us to do our homework. Nobody told us we couldn't drink two six-packs of Budweiser and then throw up in the Maytag. So why did we feel so trapped? Why did I feel like I had no options in my life when it seemed that options were the only thing I DID have?

But feelings, no matter how strong or "ugly," are not a part of who you are. They are the radio stations your mind listens to if you don't give it something better to do.

I walked up to the house, rubbing my shoulder where it still hurt from the rifle's recoil. But soon, it wouldn't hurt because I would get used to it. It was amazing to me, what a person could get used to.

I love her handbag. Inside are papers and her wallet and cigarettes and at the bottom, where she never looks, there is loose change, loose mints, specs of tobacco from her cigarettes. Sometimes I bring the bag to my face, open it and inhale as deeply as I can.

I paused finally and watched the trees for slashes of light, but saw none. As my heart settled and my ears became less occupied I listened and heard nothing but the thready pulse of the night. And I sensed that the hunt was over. I'd been prey and now I was not. Prey knows this. Prey knows when it has escaped.

My window fogs and this makes me feel like there is no world outside of the car.

Resentment is anger looking for payback. It's also a high-interest-earning emotion. Each new resentment is added to the ones from before. Long marriages have ended in ruin over tiny and insignificant grievances that were never properly aired and instead grew into a bitter barnacle of hatred.

And then just as suddenly, I felt absolutely nothing. It was like a door quickly opened, showing me what horrible feelings I had inside, and then slammed shut again so I wouldn't have to actually face them. In many ways I felt I was living the life of a doctor in the ER. I was learning to block out all emotions in order to deal with the situation.

Do you understand that you are exactly attractive enough and thin enough (even if you weigh four hundred pounds) and smart enough and funny enough, even if you cannot tell a knock-knock joke without fucking it up? You are exactly everything enough to the person who thinks you are. Just like when you look at them, your eyes will get all wet and girly. Because of their beauty. Even if by any ordinary, reasonable standard, they're short and old and have bad skin.

Delay is a gun pointed at the temple of confidence.

eath, when it finally arrives, does so in a surprising fashion: it adds nothing to the room, not a light or a spark or a sound; death does not stir a molecule of the air. You know it arrives because there is suddenly a subtraction. You will feel it before you know it.

Oh, I had a great time. My thirty-three-year-old boyfriend said he wished they could package my cum like ice cream so he could eat it all day.

I want to feel calm and at ease. Like someone who lives in Half Moon Bay, California, and makes hummus from scratch. Instead, I feel like I'm a contestant on some awful supermarket game show where I've got sixty seconds to hurl my shopping cart down the aisles, piling it with as much as possible before the buzzer goes off.

His laugh is made of porch swings and lemonade.

It's not that I was an outright nitwit of a child.

And as soon as I thought this, I tried to think of something else quickly. Because we were so close that I felt sometimes like she could read my mind.

Part of me felt deep compassion. And another part felt like, You fucker.

The year I snuck an interracial lesbian couple into the background of an American Airlines commercial, I was feeling particularly flush.

Truthfulness itself is almost medicinal, even when it's served without advice or insight. Just hearing true words spoken out loud provides relief.

Hope and God were buddies. Theirs was not a formal relationship steeped in ritual and tradition. It was more of a close yet casual friendship.

Not all gay men send me penis pictures. But no straight men do. And to date, no woman has sent me a picture of her vaginal canal. 'I know it's a little stretched out, but I've had four kids. What do you expect? LOL.

As I sat on the midnight PVTA bus to Amherst, I scanned the male faces, looking for a potential boyfriend. My standards were high: anyone who looked back at me.