Quotes from Augusten Burroughs

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. Just a couple of tiny differences here and there and look what happened to the sugar: it can stand upright and send tweets.

All children should be loved, protected, nurtured—emotionally and intellectually—respected, and never, under any circumstances, underestimated. Especially, most essentially, by themselves. *

The calcium in your bones came from a star. We are all made from recycle bits and pieces of the universe. This matters because origins matter.

We have no control over anything large in life; only the small details are under our direct management. But even then, we lack any real authority.

Then you get pubic hair and everything changes. Pubic hair signals the beginning of your demise. After pubic hair comes high school, college, work. By the time you've started working, you're ruined. And you will never make a friend as completely and easily as you did when you still wiped your nose on your sleeve.

I go to sleep feeling impressed with the powers of the mind. *

Somehow, through a flip of the coin, I ended up here. Feeling like somebody at the top of the heart-lung transplant recipient list. Damaged but invigorated and fucking lucky.

I read The Old Man and the Sea but my eyelids bled from the toothpicks that I used to keep them open.

Never, ever try to impress somebody. Be exactly the person you would be if you were alone or with somebody it was safe to fart around.

To stop drinking, all you have to do is sit. In 100 percent of the documented cases of alcoholism worldwide, the people who recovered all shared one thing in common, no matter how they did it: They didn't do it.

I understood, I need to write. Live here, in my words, and my head. I need to go inside, that's all. No big, complicated, difficult thing. I just need to go in reverse.

My youth is gone, but something far better has taken its place.

Trying is not the same as being. Trying flies in a circle around the moment and *being* is inside of it.

Stars should not be seen alone. That's why there are so many. Two people should stand together and look at them. One person alone will surely miss the good ones.

the one thing that will finally make you feel you aren't missing something essential, such as the point.

The only time it was okay to drink Kahlúa was if you were thirteen, your parents were out of town, and you needed something to break the ice so you could have sex with your homeroom teacher. Kahlúa was medicine for teenagers; not a drink for grown-ups.

A tear wells in his eye. It wells and then spills down his cheek. And despite being pumped with booze and coke, I can read that one eye as clearly as a billboard for cigarettes. Only instead of saying Alive with Pleasure it says, I Have to Go Now.

He'd been single for so long, and the more I knew him, the more I saw the loneliness at his core. I felt like I brought him to life. He

This sounds fine with me, I like the idea of seeing a shrink once a week as maintenance. It's another chance to talk about myself without being interrupted. Plus, a shrink doesn't really know me, so I can present a more balanced picture of who I really am.

Self-pity isn't the most accurate description for this feeling because it describes only half of it: sad for me, I'm hurt. What's missing is the other half: and you need to do something about it.

That is self-pity and it is dangerous because it signals a lack of accountability for one's mental state and, worse, the outcome of one's life.

She reminded me of a scatterbrained old Cadillac that had been driven into the ground but somehow kept on starting, without fuss.

He smiled like a cat with fresh chipmunk blood on his whiskers.

Perfectionism is the satin-lined casket of creativity and originality. If