Quotes from Augusten Burroughs

Maybe one of my problems is I never depend upon the kindness of strangers.

Nothing worth having comes easy.

By engaging with the person you're with. Which means, not thinking while they're speaking and not forming your answer as they are in the middle of asking the question. Engaging with the person means following carefully what they say, going for the full ride of their dialogue. So that you don't skip over a nuance by mistake. This is what'll keep you from zoning out, avoiding eye contact, looking at the wall like a freak, or sweating too much.

The Schnauzer listens to jazz. I listen to jazz because he likes it, and I have even gone to jazz concerts with him, but truthfully I would rather listen to retarded children pounding on pan lids with wooden spoons.

One minute we were sitting at the lowly kitchen table moaning about the sorry state of our lives and the next we were liberating the architecture with heavy projectiles. This was pure, freedom. Better than sniffing glue.

The air is so clean out here, so fresh. Reminds me of when I was a little girl in Georgia. Then she took More from her pack and lit it.

I like the bad one better,' I said. 'She had flying monkeys, and the good one was tacky and seemed kind of dumb.

He likes things that make sense, and this word explains everything he knows about me. It makes perfect sense. Unless you don't know me, in which case it's delusional, irrational, and absurd.

I've never been able to stop the blockbuster disaster film from playing on an endless loop in my mind. I see the terrible coming, whether it is or not.

I understood that I was clearly insane. But he apparently hadn't picked up on how many times in one short letter I asserted that I was not. This acceptance of my questionable mental health made me feel confident that we would be compatible, possibly for life. I

Like socks in a dryer, it had vanished into the ether.

Do you understand that you are exactly attractive enough and thin enough (even though 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.

It's neat how money smells nothing like anything in the world except money, just like cardboard.

All a rainbow is is light that walks behind a raindrop and its colors fall out.

The decided mind is a closed mind. A closed mind can keep you separated from the ultimate truth.

I wasn't cold, I wasn't anything at all I was only a blur.

I was desperate to show him what I could do on my own. But my father, because he hadn't been there, simply didn't believe what I was actually capable of accomplishing.

Speaking the words aloud so they would exist in the world and begin to become real.

People believe in god because they can't think to be alone.

You manufacture beauty with your mind

Everything important originated with nothingness.

Where there is nothing, absolutely anything is possible.

see the anger for what it is: fuel. Pissed-off people can accomplish a lot if they don't just spray their rage fuel all over the place

everything you want to make happen, any obstacle you want to overcome, any crisis you must survive—the prerequisite is being able to allow yourself to feel whatever it is you feel and not pretend to feel something you don't.