Quotes from Augusten Burroughs

Books are like that. Books just are. Sometimes books need to be, they need to exist and so they will body-snatch a writer and climb out through the writer's fingers and into the world where they belong to different people to different degrees and for different reasons. I

I feel dirty when I visit my mother. I feel that her intimacy is exposed. Her nightgowns are so thin that her flesh shows through them. Her need is like a vagina. And I do not like to see it.

When you have a blueprint for what happiness is, lay it over your life and see what you need to change so the images are more aligned.

Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I'm an imposter.

Think of the actual physical elements that compose our bodies: we are 98 percent hydrogen and oxygen and carbon. That's table sugar. You are made of the same stuff as table sugar.

Truth is not an opinion. It's a force like gravity. It's the most valuable substance known to man.

If you spend twenty years trying to get something and you still don't have it, is it admirable to keep trying? Or did you pass admirable several miles back and it's getting close to straitjacket time? If you are no closer to having something you've been chasing for twenty years, your data is broken. Either you can't get it, period; you already have it; you don't really need or want it; or it's not real.

There is a complexity to life that I often overlook. There is a depth of thinking, there is a richness. I am skating on the surface.

Because he will grip you by the shoulders and wrench you around and he will bring his bristly mouth to yours and blow stars down your throat until you are so full of light

So if you're a straight-A student in school or a metaphorical straight-A student in your adult life, that's a whole lot of the same old, same old. One A+ paper blends right into the next. It's when you get a D that you learn something valuable. It's when you fall on your ass that you actually make progress. I am a complete and total fuckup. Which is exactly why I am equipped to write this book and tell you how to live.

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.

I lay back against the pillows and stared up at the ceiling. I hated myself. I thought, I am just a destructive force in the world. Look at all the bodies I leave behind me. *

Granted, many of them were indistinguishable blobs in my alcoholic smear of a social life, but I knew how the mind lulled you into a state of perilous complacency when all you had was a personality and a disassociated voice. Meeting

Applause is a constant thing in AA. It's how we buy drinks for each other.

The best person you can be is the person you are when you are alone on a random Thursday. That's who you are.

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it. —Jules Renard, 1890

What is lint? How does it find hair dryers and navels?

When strangers saw him cowering and shivering and skittering, they all assumed he'd had a dramatically abusive past. And by "all," I mean every single person who saw him. Each one felt the need to make sad faces and say, "Awwww, look at how scared he is. He must be a rescue." I quickly got to the point where I wanted to say, "Actually, no, he's a purebred, but I beat him." Thin

I just had way too much energy for six A.M. Too much motivation. It was like the drunk side of my brain was trying to act distracting and entertaining, so the business side wouldn't realize it was being held hostage by a drunk. I

She's an excellent presenter and would have succeeded in advertising, is what I think. She generates a sense of excitement in the room and I become aware that my hands are moist with sweat, but not from fear. From needing to know what happened next. I like the drama. I glance around the room and other people look rapt as well. And I feel like, That's the reason to go to a gay rehab. People appreciate the drama.

Whenever you lose something of great value, it's important to focus on its value to you and not on the loss of it.

He was terrified (his word) of us becoming "isolated." What alarmed me is that his idea of isolated was much closer to my concept of ideal. If we lived on a great expanse of land, Dennis would want a grand swimming pool so that we could invite all our friends over for long, leisurely weekends. Whereas I would want a moat filled with saltwater crocodiles to keep the riffraff out. *

It's not such a huge deal when this happens at a 7-Eleven. It's pretty huge, though, when you spend the entire job interview trying not to come across like a box of hair and you come across like a box of hair.

Even though I am wary of Nature. After all, where do most manhunts for escaped serial killers begin? Exactly. In the woods.