Augusten Burroughs quotes

I really look at my childhood as being one giant rusty tuna can that I continue to recycle in many different shapes. (Augusten Burroughs)
I was learning that if I lived slightly in the future-what will happen next-I didn't have to feel so much about what was going on in the present.
Augusten Burroughs
Any damage that's been done, you have to fix yourself because it needs fixing and there is nobody else to do the work. Blame may well be justified, but it's not going to move you forward in your life.
Augusten Burroughs
I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.
Augusten Burroughs
Although I was able to maintain a pleasant expression, I was mentally throwing up in her face.
Augusten Burroughs
What nobody understood then is this: The only way that you achieve what you want and fulfill your dreams and become great is by demanding that sort of attention. You have to make it happen.
Augusten Burroughs
His laugh is made if porch swings and lemonade.
Augusten Burroughs
I did not consider him to be any kind of a genius. I considered him deeply lacking in the area that mattered most in life. Star quality.
Augusten Burroughs
The problem with not having anybody to tell you what to do, I understood, is that there was nobody to tell you what not to do.
Augusten Burroughs
We were young. We were bored. And the old electroshock therapy machine was just under the stairs in a box next to the Hoover.
Augusten Burroughs
I couldn't help but think, This car is taking me to a mental hospital and my mother is treating it like open-mic night at a Greenwich Village café. (Augusten Burroughs)
Our lives are one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity.
Augusten Burroughs
The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall.
Augusten Burroughs
Other people sound flat to my ear; their words just hang in the air. But when my mother says something, the ends curl.
Augusten Burroughs
You deserve to need me, not to have me.
Augusten Burroughs
I missed him so much that I had physical sensations of loss, all over my body. Like one minute I was missing an arm, the next my spleen. It was making me feel sick, like throwing up.
Augusten Burroughs
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.
Augusten Burroughs
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.
Augusten Burroughs
Maybe you feel pressure to be positive because so many people rely on your good, fake-positive energy? If that's the case, screw everybody else. You're not a bottle of Valium.
Augusten Burroughs
Everybody in recovery smokes. If you don't like smoking, don't even bother trying to get sober. Just stay drunk.
Augusten Burroughs
To me, these people were as exotic as animals in a zoo. I'd never seen anything like them. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be one of them or simply live among them taking notes and photographs. (Augusten Burroughs)
I think I love him, but I also think that you can love people who aren't good for you.
Augusten Burroughs
Think of your head as an unsafe neighborhood; don't go there alone.
Augusten Burroughs
Perfection is the satin-lined casket of creativity and originality. If you are a perfectionist, at least stop telling everybody you're one and try to get over it yourself, alone in your home with the lights off.
Augusten Burroughs
Sometimes when you work in advertising you'll get a product that's really garbage and you have to make it seem fantastic, something that is essential to the continued quality of life.
Augusten Burroughs