Quotes from Augusten Burroughs

If I were a serial killer, I would not be the kind that stabs and then eats the victim. I would be the kind that hides in a tree and shoots at the aerobics class.

I knew that he was as reliable as a mathematical formula.

Give that mint Milano back, you bitch. If you can't at least be polite, you don't get a treat.

It was a great story and I admired her. And I also felt a little envious. Because that bloody tampon had been a secret weapon. And every woman had one. But only a woman like Debby would be brave enough to use it.

Should I just sit down, right here at carousel seven, and shake until somebody's arms are around me and they're saying, 'It's okay, I'm here, I'm here, come with me to the institute.

And that was one thing I didn't want: NO CASUAL SEX. I thought it was disgusting, the idea of just screwing around and then that's it.

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.

Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping.

In the same way that a tornado rips the roof off a double-wide trailer, leaving the occupants dazed and staring at the clouds from the splinters of what used to be their living room, it was over.

All of us are richer and more fascinating and more complex than we can ever know.

I gazed around the room and my eyes stopped dead on a little boy standing in the corner. This was a particularly eerie doll. Life-sized and blond-haired and blue-eyed. I saw a little Nazi boy, pockets probably stuffed with scissors and retractable blades. My grandfather on my mother's side was rumored to be half Jewish, which practically makes me Jerry Seinfeld's brother, and thus wary of blond German boys with their hands out of sight.

Unscripted, unedited, and wholly authentic people are almost universally admired, especially if they have flaws, are not afraid to make live, red-blooded mistakes, and rather than trying are busy simply being.

There's not enough of me left over.

I sit there and think how it isn't fair that I can't drink at all, even a little. I realize I have crammed an entire lifetime of moderate drinking into a decade of hard-core drinking and that is why. I blew my wad.

There is no shame in being hungry for another person. There is no shame in wanting very much to share your life with somebody.

Fairness is not among the laws of the universe. This means, if someone runs over your foot in a car and they don't stop , that's just too bad and it totally sucks and you better bust your ass to get yourself to the hospital right now so they can save the foot.

This is what I'm saying; you hate your life. But you don't know what life is. Life is too huge for you to possibly hate. If you hate life, you haven't seen enough of it. If you hate your life, it's because your life is too small and doesn't fit you. However big you think your life is, it's nothing compared to what's out there.

As I sat in the hot, salty water, I thought, 'No wonder Mr. Bubble always gives me a urinary tract infection and hives.' Mr. Bubble was for common people. Mr. Bubble was for my so-called brother, their true child. I was a Vanderbilt. I should bathe in condiments and seasonings.

And of course, the answer came to me in the same way Jesus comes to those who drink in trailers: as an epiphany.

Saying just the right thing after a considerable, awkward pause is far less effective than saying the wrong thing with perfect timing. I'm telling you.

When I ate vanilla frosting straight from the can, I could feel God standing right next to me like a real best friend, watching, and smiling, and wishing he had a mouth.

He looked and sounded exactly like a real psychiatrist. Until he opened his mouth. Let's ask God, he said.

I had the same worry that we wouldn't later be able to undo whatever it was we were doing to ourselves.

And human instinct is ancient and reliable, utterly mysterious and possibly capable of great genius. I believe that refined, fluent instincts are a person's most valuable asset. My own instincts have repeatedly guided me against the grain of logic and probability. When I have trusted and followed their direction, they have never been wrong. I don't know how or why. But I know that every significant experience-positive or negative-sharpens them and makes them more accurate.