Quotes from Augusten Burroughs

When you do not have your health, nothing else matters at all.

Bulls**t,' I say. 'You chose to relapse. You didn't have to.' I hate it when alcoholics relapse and then act like somebody cut the bake lines on their cars. 253-254.

Bulls**t,' I say. 'You chose to relapse. You didn't have to.' I hate it when alcoholics relapse and then act like somebody cut the brake lines on their cars.

I was drunk from the attention

And it hits me, the reason for all the metaphors in recovery. Because the bald truth would too terrifying. What she's saying is I may need an all-new career and all-new friends. p 85

Shame is the landfill emotion. It's not organic, like joy. It was dumped there by somebody else.

I know that under the best, lowest-stress circumstances I am an absolute horror to live with, a halogen-illuminated fountain of anxiety, control, and catastrophe. Mental health would be nice, but there's not time for that, so I do the next best thing: on a walk along the Hudson to loosen the phlegm in my chest, I stop at a deli and pick up a sack of twelve oversized butter cookies with multicolored sprinkles.

My parents' divorce was explosive. But as with all things that explode, a clean, flattened area was created. I could see the horizon now. The fights between my parents would be over because they weren't speaking; the tension in the house would be eased because there was no house. The canvas was now clean.

Sometimes you know something is going to happen, even though they are ample opportunities to prevent it. Even though you don't want it, you know it's inevitable.

We live in a physical world where the mere act of observation alone is enough to alter that which is observed, to change it from one form of matter into another. What is that if not magick?

A person can be utterly incompetent and yet dazzlingly confident. What's more, this same person can know how incompetent they are and still be just as confident. Confidence has nothing to do with ability.

y father was otherwise occupied in his role of highly functional alcoholic professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts. He had psoriasis that covered his entire body and gave him the appearance of a dried mackerel that could stand upright and wear tweed. And he had the loving, affectionate and outgoing personality of petrified wood.

My father was otherwise occupied in his role of highly functional alcoholic professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts. He had psoriasis that covered his entire body and gave him the appearance of a dried mackerel that could stand upright and wear tweed. And he had the loving, affectionate and outgoing personality of petrified wood.

Eventually the fight moved next door to the kitchen, providing them with better lighting as well as potential weapons.

No, this is what has suddenly consumed me: if something were to happen on the island of Manhattan, the fact that we are, indeed, on an island would suddenly become a deep and terrible problem. I am wholly unequipped for a disaster. Vulnerable. The safety in numbers I had always felt in the city was an illusion. All those numbers could turn against each other under the right circumstances.

Not the random, seemingly drunken hand of Mother Nature herself. That crazy old bitch gave us the California Redwoods - true, but right along with it she whipped up some naked mole rat.

The truth about healing is that you don't need to heal to be whole. By whole, I mean damaged, missing pieces of who you were, your heart—missing what feels like some of your most important parts. Yet not missing any part of you at all. Being, in truth, larger than you were before. Because all of us are made not only of what we have but of what we lost. And loss is not a subtraction. As an experience, it is an addition.

As a writer, you can't allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.

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.

But she did love him. I believe it. I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn't deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention.

Love is a helium-based emotion; Love always takes the high road.

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

I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn't deserve it.

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.