Quotes from Augusten Burroughs

I wish Rick would be gang-raped by a bunch of Muslim garbage collectors.

Except this "if we're meant to meet, we'll meet" attitude isn't truly relaxed. So we're not going to commend you for it. This attitude is more passive than relaxed. A passivity born of entitlement. You are owed a soul mate; this has been promised to you since birth. Everybody knows that. So why worry?

It is astonishingly satisfying to look at him and think Closet Case, and know he can read my mind as he looks away flushed. All Mormons are gay, I believe. Rick is merely a further example.

I hate having feelings. Why does sobriety have to come with feelings? One minute I feel excited, the next I feel terrified. One minute I feel free and the next I feel doomed. I think about lobotomies. Are they like nose jobs, can you just go and have one? Or do you need a doctor's recommendation?

Two hundred tons of ore is a great amount of ore. If, after a reasonable amount of time and effort you remain unhappily single, my suggestion is that you employ the services of a cat or a dog. Both cats and dogs are known hiding places of soul mates. They are also very, very good at getting strangers to talk to them in kind voices. Which, it should be noted, could be of some use to those who might otherwise be too shy to step forward and say, hello.

I nodded again, but I knew I would not grow up to drive a bulldozer. It would be awful to be dirty all day like these men. I didn't say it, but at best I would keep one in the backyard, like a goat.

All I know for sure is that I have accidentally fallen through a wormhole in the universe and stumbled into someone else's grim life.

Was it a universal truth that the closer you looked at something, the more you would see but the less you would understand what you where looking at?

That may be true, I thought, But they don't have digital cable or Internet access, so really what's the point of being alive? Civilized life, with all its threats and potential dooms, is too much to bear without the respite of three hundred channels. True, Osama bin Laden may very well send nuclear-bomb-filled suitcases on Amtrak trains into Penn Station, but until then: I Love the 80s on VH1.

Like somebody who was just happy because there was macaroni and cheese in the world.

This is what you should know about losing somebody you love. They do not travel alone. You go with them.

Truth is accuracy. Without accuracy, you can't expect to manifest large, specific changes in your life.

I think I love him, but I also think that you can love people who aren't good for you.

What you've written isn't a novel. It's a cry for help." I

I referred albums to the more modern eight tracks. Albums came with sleeves which reminded me of clean underwear. Plus, the pictures were bigger, making it easier to see each follicle of Tony Orlando's shiny arm hair.

And it hits me, the reason for all the metaphors in recovery. Because the bald truth would be too terrifying. What she's saying is I may need an all-new career and all-new friends.

And then it hits me. I'm not anxious, I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be so lonely because it seems catastrophic—seeing the car just as it hits you. But then all of a sudden, that feeling is gone and I'm blank. So it's like a door quickly opened, just a crack, to show me what a mess I was inside.

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

Life is too huge for you to possibly hate.

Basically, he liked anything until it harmed him and then he was wary. All creatures in life had an equal chance with my brother, from terrier to psychotherapist. Those that impressed him with an especially keen mental ability, an amusing trick or had a large portion of food to offer would gain his favor. If my brother could find nothing of value to the person, he would dismiss them entirely.

Gone were the days when she would stand on the deck lighting lemon-scented candles without then having to eat the wax

he already knew how horrible I could be, yet he loved me, anyway.

I realized I'd only seen him at night in dim, flattering restaurant lighting. The sun was not his friend.

I said all the wrong things. Except when I was busy saying all the mean ones and in the end I hated everybody and everything.