Quotes from Augusten Burroughs

Truthfulness itself is almost medication, even when it's served without advice or insight.

I love you, she said, and I knew she meant it because she spoke the words from the heart at the center of her chest. This, at least, had not been left behind at the hospital.

Confidence is a reduction of your own interest in whether others are thinking about you and if so, what they're thinking.

Awe, I discovered, was my favorite feeling. It was a rare experience, but when it happened, it was like an orgasm for the mind.

All improvements, transformations, achievements, liberations; everything you want to change about yourself and your life; everything you want to make happen, any obstacle you want to overcome, any crisis you must survive—the prerequisite is being able to allow yourself to feel whatever it is you feel and not pretend to feel something you don't.

Long marriages have ended in ruin over tiny and insignificant grievances that were never properly aired and instead grew into a brittle barnacle of hatred.

What I really want is to sit next to someone on an L.L. bean blanket on the beach in the fall and drink coffee from the same mug. I don't want some rusty '73 Ford Pinto with a factory-defective gas tank that causes it to explode when its rear-ended in the parking lot of the supermarket. So why do I keep looking for Pintos?

How many of the things I fear or dread are actually things that I want?

Decisions are beautiful. They are the evidence of thought and care. Decisions are the polishing cloths of life.

I was like a packet of powdered Sea Monkeys and they were like water.

and she's a nurse. do you know how hard nursing school is? it's like medical school. so she's obviously smart.

I was struck with a bolt of distilled horror like I have never known before. Far worse than suddenly finding yourself walking through a prison cafeteria wearing Daisy Duke shorts and a Jane Fonda headband.

I am tired from having lived seventeen different lives, compressed into the space of one.

Not crazy in a 'let's paint the kitchen bright red!' sort of way. But crazy in a 'gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God' sort of way. Gone were the days when she would stand on the deck lighting lemon-scented candles without then having to eat the wax.p28

I like it when she's shiny, like a star, like a guest on the Donnie and Marie Show .

While I liked hamsters, too, the Habitrail cage was expensive. Even I could see that the interconnecting boxes, tubes, and spheres could easily bankrupt a family and lead to addiction later in life. Because, how would you know when to stop? How could you stop? An entire city could be built with a Habitrail.

If my mother was odd enough to crave a bubble bath at three in the morning, Dorothy was inventive enough to suggest adding broken glass to the tub. If my mother insisted on listening to West Side Story repeatedly, it was Dorothy who said, 'Let's listen to it on forty-five!' And when my mother announced that she wanted a fur wrap like Auntie Mame, Dorothy bought her an unstable Norwegian elkhound from a puppy mill.

But then, look at me. My brain is incorrectly formed, and I'm shaped like a tube. Plus, I'm an alcoholic, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, was raised in a cult and have no education. So, really, if you think about it, the only thing that separates me from the guy with the stinky foot and no teeth is a book deal and some cologne.

George had been surprised by my ability to leave him. He had not seen that in me.

I once read about a guy who lost his arms in a fire. The nurse took pity on him and gave him a hand job. I don't even get that.

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

Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer. Glen had been born on the day after Christmas. My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that's all, he explained. But we knew this was a lie. Glen's parents just wrapped a couple of his Christmas presents in birthday-themed wrapping paper, stuck some candles in a supermarket cake, and had a dinner of Christmas leftovers.

Nothing surprises me now, I tell him. I am stoic. I am Joan of Arc, with liver damage and an unused penis.

Happiness is a treadmill of a goal for people who are not happy by nature. Being an unhappy person does not mean you must be sad or dark. You can be interested instead of happy.