Quotes from Augusten Burroughs

So he definitely hadn't been angry, and I definitely had believed he was. This meant something inside of me — something I had relied on my entire life — was essentially faulty. My compass, my inner homing pigeon, my deeper instincts. Since mine clearly could not be trusted, I would have to rely on his.

The unfairness of your current status is unimportant. What matters is, can you do what you need to do? If

In spouse, I mostly hear "S.mouse," the name of Chris Lilley's blackface teenage rapper in Angry Boys. And

Dutch isn't easy for the outsider to learn, because it's spoken from the back of the throat at the trigger spot for the gag reflex.

Pissed-off people need back rubs and they also need gym memberships.

I would have been an excellent member of the Brady Bunch. I would have been Shaun, the well-behaved blond boy who caused no trouble and helped Alice in the kitchen, then trimmed the split ends off Marcia's hair. I would have not only washed Tiger, but then conditioned his fur. And I would have cautioned Jan against that tacky bracelet that caused the girls to lose the house-of-cards-building contest. *

I understood that instead of being a treat for me, the Certs had been a mild compromise for him. By letting me believe they were a special something, just for me, he didn't have to actually think of a special something for me.

You exposed your penis on national television, Max. What am I supposed to do? I didn't expose it, Howard, it just sort of peeked out.

I sat up and my mouth tasted horrible, like stale pot, beer and Cheetos. The exact combination of ingredients that had caused me to pass into unconsciousness on Natalie's floor.

You can never replace it. The good news is you do learn to live without it. You miss it. You want it. You hang out with a bunch of other crazy people who feel the same way and you live with it. And eventually, you start to sound like a cloying self-help book, like me.

We're all going to die eventually so why not have some fun.

Shame is also a covert and effective bullying method. All those bullies from the seventh grade didn't simply evaporate. They grew up, too, and it's pretty safe to assume that the majority did not seek therapy on their eighteenth birthday to explore their disturbing childhood need for cruelty.

The shame is disguised here as helpful. But both people in this conversation would know it was bullying.

When you feel spontaneously excited by something—a new career you never thought about, a haircut you see in a magazine and want—shame is the voice that brings you "back down to earth.

You will either do so convincingly and well, or you won't. But at least you will be plugged in to the moment in the process. Not flitting just outside of it, trying to keep everything together like one of those little heel-snapping Sheltie dogs.

When you say, "I need more confidence," what you're really saying is, "I need those people over there to approve of me." That is the desire to control other people and what they think. The first person who figures out how to do this owns the world.

It takes two people looking in all directions at once to see everything.

It can be a bit of a puzzle, locating the single aspect of your life that isn't what it appears to be, the belief you assume you hold dear but that, in fact, you've never even questioned. It's hard to find what you don't know you're searching for.

But she had wanted it to work so she ignored these things. This is what happens when you go against the grain of truth: you get splinters later on.

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

There is always dishonesty at the heart of unhappiness.

To live in regret and change nothing else in your life is to miss the entire point.

These core certainties are sheltered from your scrutiny. Because you know you can depend on them, you never question them.

When you're busy, you lack the time to fondle your emotional baggage. And if that sounds too reductive, remember we crawled from the swamp. Simple isn't such a terrible thing to be in this respect.