Augusten Quotes & Sayings

I wanted to shove her typewriter on the floor. I hated it and I hated her. I wanted to be a Cosby. — Augusten Burroughs

So if you think the job really suits you, be you. — Augusten Burroughs

The shame is disguised here as helpful. But both people in this conversation would know it was bullying. — Augusten Burroughs

You weren't heavy at all ... the only weight you carry is on your shoulders. I wish I could carry it for you. — Augusten Burroughs

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. — Augusten Burroughs

I like, though, that people have a hunger to connect with other people. They're desperate to know that you're not lying to them or misleading them. — Augusten Burroughs

If you spend twenty years trying to get something and you still don't have it, is it admirable to keep trying? Or did you pass admirable several miles back and it's getting close to straitjacket time?
If you are no closer to having something you've been chasing for twenty years, your data is broken. Either you can't get it, period; you already have it; you don't really need or want it; or it's not real. — Augusten Burroughs

I was in advertising for years. That was cushy, you know? It's pretty cushy in a lot of ways, but I hated it. — Augusten Burroughs

I said all the wrong things. Except when I was busy saying all the mean ones and in the end I hated everybody and everything. — Augusten Burroughs

Loss creates a greater overall surface area within a person. You expand as a result of it. Though it may very well feel like the opposite. — Augusten Burroughs

Because the minister's wife refused to leave the minister, and because my mother required a worshipful companion, she was forced to break up with Fern and secure herself a new mate. As luck would have it, Dr. Finch had recently begun seeing a suicidal eighteen-year-old African-American girl who had taken a leave of absence from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her name was Dorothy. — Augusten Burroughs

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.
Be that person. Be the person you are right now, alone, reading this book.
And then meet people.
Then hold out until you meet somebody who is utterly impressed.
Because then? You will not have impressed them. They will have been impressed by you. — Augusten Burroughs

Because all of us are made not only of what we have but what we lost. And loss is not a subtraction. As an experience, it is an addition. — Augusten Burroughs

I referred albums to the more modern eight tracks. Albums came with sleeves which reminded me of clean underwear. Plus, the pictures were bigger, making it easier to see each follicle of Tony Orlando's shiny arm hair. — Augusten Burroughs

Never work with children, puppies or bulimics. — Augusten Burroughs

Handsome people are always interesting to watch. But a handsome person in crisis is riveting. — Augusten Burroughs

I can't tell you how much I love Target and Costco, that kind of culture, because it's something I never felt a part of. I've always felt like a tourist because I have never fit in anywhere. — Augusten Burroughs

Dennis's superior mental health was obvious from the first date, like a cleft palate. The other thing about him was that he had shapely, muscular legs. His calves were so sculpted they looked artificial, like silicone implants. This is a look I'm fond of. In fact, if I had been born a girl there is no doubt in my mind that my chest cavity would have been stuffed with two softball-sized orbs of silicone before my eleventh birthday. In this way my own mental health is somewhat like a cleft palate. — Augusten Burroughs

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

I would borrow the microphone and stuff it down the front of my pants, examining myself from every angle in the mirror — Augusten Burroughs

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

Life is too huge for you to possibly hate. — Augusten Burroughs

Gone were the days when she would stand on the deck lighting lemon-scented candles without then having to eat the wax — Augusten Burroughs

After a horribly long day, I needed a mental break. I threw on my parka, with the raccoon fur around the hood, and I went to see a movie. But what to see? Something sweet and stupid and harmless. At the movie theater on Second Avenue and Twelfth, a title caught my eye. I thought, 'That seems good. Jodie Foster and a puffy, friendly farm animal, a butterfly.' I unzipped my jacket and headed inside to see a movie I'd heard the name of but knew nothing about. It was called Silence Of The Lambs. — Augusten Burroughs

God, I felt certain, did not mind that I didn't press my hands together to pray. I was casual, but I was sincere. I knew that God existed as the Correct Answer inside my chest. — Augusten Burroughs

My brother was born without taste or the desire to be professionally lit. — Augusten Burroughs

There just didn't seem to be anything to hold on to. We weren't going anywhere, and we weren't pulling away. We were just floating, suspended in liquid. And I guess I want more. And I don't know what he wants. — Augusten Burroughs

Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true. — Augusten Burroughs

Being an unhappy person does not mean you must be sad or dark. You can be interested instead of happy. You can be fascinated instead of happy. — Augusten Burroughs

Pain is interesting. I dislike it immensely but I've never experienced pain and boredom at the same time. Even when I had unending and severe pain in my lower back for several years I was never bored by the pain, though it exhausted me. — Augusten Burroughs

SEEING THE TRUTH MEANS looking at everything for the first time, every time. — Augusten Burroughs

The best person you can be is the person you are when you are alone on a random Thursday. That's who you are. — Augusten Burroughs

And then it hits me. I'm not anxious, I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be so lonely because it seems catastrophic - seeing the car just as it hits you. But then all of a sudden, that feeling is gone and I'm blank. So it's like a door quickly opened, just a crack, to show me what a mess I was inside. — Augusten Burroughs

Dennis is the person who organizes everything in our lives. To the casual outsider, it would seem grossly unfair. He owns a company, he handles all our money, he manages our lives. While I sit and write, Dennis does everything else. When I try to accept additional responsibilities, I make a mess and he has to fix whatever I broke. — Augusten Burroughs

In order for us [people] to progress, we need brilliance and brilliance isn't fair and it's not polite and we can't grow it. It happens. Genius happens and it doesn't always happen in a zip code where we can access it. Therefore, we kind of need [Internet] not to keep tabs on everybody but we need to give them access to everybody else. — Augusten Burroughs

If you have one parent who loves you, even if they can't buy you clothes, they're so poor and they make all kinds of mistakes and maybe sometimes they even give you awful advice, but never for one moment do you doubt their love for you
if you have this, you have incredibly good fortune.
If you have two parents who love you? You have won life's Lotto.
If you do not have parents, or if the parents you have are so broken and so, frankly, terrible that they are no improvement over nothing, this is fine.
It's not ideal because it's harder without adults who love you more than they love themselves. But harder is just harder, that's all. — Augusten Burroughs

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. — Augusten Burroughs

My mother is from Cairo, Georgia. This makes everything she says sound like it went through a curling iron. — Augusten Burroughs

Instead of becoming depressed that I was in the locked ward of a mental hospital, I pretended I was playing a role in a movie, possibly on my way to an Emmy. — Augusten Burroughs

I think people tend to see the bigger point, which is maybe not fitting in and feeling like you didn't have the childhood that you expected you would have, or that you felt lonely or struggled with drugs and alcohol or just that you were able to achieve your dreams. — Augusten Burroughs

Bad news should be followed with soup. Then a nap. — Augusten Burroughs

I know now: what is is all that matters. Not the thing you know is meant to be, not what could be, not what should be, not what ought to be, not what once was.
Only the is. — Augusten Burroughs

Marriage is overdone. As long as there are people, people are going to find it interesting. — Augusten Burroughs

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. — Augusten Burroughs

It's neat how money smells nothing like anything in the world except money, just like cardboard. — Augusten Burroughs

Canadian researchers found those with low self-esteem actually felt worse after repeating positive statements about themselves. They said phrases such as "I am a lovable person" only helped people with high self-esteem. The study appeared in the journal Psychological Science. ... They found that, paradoxically, those with low self-esteem were in a better mood when they were allowed to have negative thoughts than when they were asked to focus exclusively on affirmative thoughts. ... Repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people, such as individuals with high self-esteem, but backfire for the very people who need them the most. — Augusten Burroughs

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 — Augusten Burroughs

Adam had smiled at him and Max had smiled back. And then they both just stood there in that awkward silence that happens when two people are attracted to each other but don't know what to do about it because they are strangers. — Augusten Burroughs

I love her handbag. Inside are papers and her wallet and cigarettes and at the bottom, where she never looks, there is loose change, loose mints, specs of tobacco from her cigarettes. Sometimes I bring the bag to my face, open it and inhale as deeply as I can. — Augusten Burroughs

I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word. — Augusten Burroughs

The most important thing for a writer to do is to write. It really doesn't matter what you write as long as you are able to write fluidly, very quickly, very effortlessly. It needs to become not second nature but really first nature to you. And read; you need to read and you need to read excellent books and then some bad books. Not as many bad books, but some bad books, so that you can see what both look like and why both are what they are. — Augusten Burroughs

Smoking had become my favorite thing in the world to do. It was like having instant comfort, no matter where or when. — Augusten Burroughs

You deserve to need me, not to have me. — 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

Truth is accuracy. Without accuracy, you can't expect to manifest large, specific changes in your life. — Augusten Burroughs

I never could have written the screenplay because I would have been forced to learn new software and I can't learn one more thing. — Augusten Burroughs

He's a really nice guy, if only I weren't me. — Augusten Burroughs

I feel dirty when I visit my mother. I feel that her intimacy is exposed. Her nightgowns are so thin that her flesh shows through them. Her need is like a vagina. And I do not like to see it. — 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

Because I've lived in one room my entire life, working at the same table that you use to pay bills at and eat at. It's going to be nice to have actual space. — Augusten Burroughs

After Olestra (may cause anal leakage), people are a tad suspicious about products that do things that are too good to be true in the natural world.
I tell this to the account people, and they say, "But it comes from trees!"
To which I reply, "Yes and so does napalm and rubber cement. But that doesn't mean I'm going to spread them on my English muffin. — Augusten Burroughs

Except this "if we're meant to meet, we'll meet" attitude isn't truly relaxed. So we're not going to commend you for it. This attitude is more passive than relaxed. A passivity born of entitlement. You are owed a soul mate; this has been promised to you since birth. Everybody knows that. So why worry? — Augusten Burroughs

A lot of being a writer doesn't have anything to do with writing. It's ironic - I have to squeeze the books in, even though that's what it's all about. — Augusten Burroughs

Each time my mother went psychotic, I hoped it would be the last time. Afterward she would tell me, 'I think that was the final episode. I think I had a breakthrough.' And I would believe-for a few months-that it was true. That she was back to stay. Maybe it was like having a rock star mother who was always on the road. Were there Benatar children? Did they sit around and wonder if their mom's Hell is for Children tour was going to be her last tour? — Augusten Burroughs

It then occurs to me that I am mentally unstable.
So I decided to close my office door and go online. Maybe I can do some research and find out what's wrong with my personality and then fix it. — Augusten Burroughs

Sometimes, people avoid recognizing how they feel because they believe the feelings are a part of them, and admitting to harboring anger or jealousy feels like admitting to a physical flaw. So certain feelings are denied. Which is something like believing your house is clean as long as you don't peek under the beds. — Augusten Burroughs

It's not that I was an outright nitwit of a child. — Augusten Burroughs

Applause is a constant thing in AA. It's how we buy drinks for each other. — Augusten Burroughs

As charming as the room was, I knew it wouldn't work for me. I do not need charming. I need to be online, at all times. I need surge protection. — Augusten Burroughs

Oh, I had a great time. My thirty-three-year-old boyfriend said he wished they could package my cum like ice cream so he could eat it all day. — Augusten Burroughs

You can make almost anything a learning or positive experience. I think I offer a good example of how to make the most out of what life gives you and how to keep moving on. — Augusten Burroughs

I'm an alcoholic who doesn't (and doesn't want to) drink anymore so I exist in a state of never-ending micro-addictions that reveal themselves in the form of obsessions. I was the same as a child. These obsessions are things I want, want to do, or want to be. I become so fixated I neglect every other aspect of my life. What results is that I get really good at doing a lot of different things but no matter what I do, it's never the thing that gives me the feeling, this is what I've been searching for, I am home. In other words, I never feel thin. One hundred percent of the time. It — Augusten Burroughs

Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I'm an imposter. The fact is, I am not like other people. — Augusten Burroughs

My parents had this relationship that was really terrifying. I mean, the level of hatred that they had, and the level of physical abuse - my mother would beat up my father, basically - and I think I was drawn to images on television that were bright and reflective. — Augusten Burroughs

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. — Augusten Burroughs

Put another way, to be more confident you need to give a whole lot less of a shit about what other people think of you. Confidence is not something you feel or possess; it's something others use to describe what they see when they look at you. — Augusten Burroughs

Even painfully shy and awkward people are not painfully shy or awkward when they are alone. The way to access this natural, comfortable alone-self when you are with others is by choosing to forbid yourself to wonder what "they" are thinking. Instead, force yourself to exist in the instant, then take it- and give it- as it comes. — Augusten Burroughs

His laugh is made of porch swings and lemonade. — Augusten Burroughs

When you have a blueprint for what happiness is, lay it over your life and see what you need to change so the images are more aligned. — Augusten Burroughs

Therapy could be of tremendous benefit to "getting over" one's past if the therapy is focused on specific ways to stop submitting to the temptation to obsess. Many people with difficult histories carry these histories with them, burnishing the past with each retelling. — Augusten Burroughs

One of the things I liked about her [Dorothy] was that she had long fingernails that she would carefully manicure and paint to fit her mood. If she were in a happy mood, her nails would be bright red. If she were feeling like she wanted to eviscerate her mother she would paint her nails burgundy. — Augusten Burroughs

I told myself, 'All I want is a normal life'. But was that true? I wasn't so sure. Because there was a part of me that enjoyed hating school, and the drama of not going, the potential consequences whatever they were. I was intrigued by the unknown. I was even slightly thrilled that my mother was such a mess. Had I become addicted to crisis? I traced my finger along the windowsill. 'Want something normal, want something normal, want something normal', I told myself. — Augusten Burroughs

I was on the cover of a lot of newspapers. I was on the cover of USA Today for every single day for a month. I was on the masthead, so I tend to get recognized a lot, and in weird places. It's always flattering, and it's always odd. It's always at the worst possible time. — Augusten Burroughs

I placed my hand against the side of his precious, electric face and felt the stubble beneath my fingers. I was overwhelmed with the lust and wonder of it all. — Augusten Burroughs

I'm grateful for a lot of things. One is not being a drunk wreck. Or losing all four limbs in some ridiculous East Village bus accident that I was so destined for. — Augusten Burroughs

I wish Rick would be gang-raped by a bunch of Muslim garbage collectors. — Augusten Burroughs

I understood at once, I am not living, but actively dying. I am smoking, living unhealthily. I'm shutting down. I need to go the other way, inside. And it was so clear to me what I was doing. It was suddenly perfectly clear.
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. And not worry about what to write about, but just write. Or, if I'm going to worry about what to write, then do this worrying on paper, so at least I'm writing and will have a record of the anxiety. — Augusten Burroughs

I nodded again, but I knew I would not grow up to drive a bulldozer. It would be awful to be dirty all day like these men. I didn't say it, but at best I would keep one in the backyard, like a goat. — Augusten Burroughs

I was desperate to discover what nothing felt like. It was the absence of something that attracted me. It was the start. Everything important originated with nothingness. — Augusten Burroughs

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

How to identify love by knowing what it's not: love doesn't use a fist. Love never calls you fat or lazy or ugly. Love doesn't laugh at you in front of friends. It is not in Love's interest for your self-esteem to be low. Love is a helium-based emotion; Love always takes the high road. Love does not make you beg. Love does not make you deposit your paycheck into its bank account. Love certainly never, never, never brings the children into it. Love does not ask or even want you to change. But if you change, Love is as excited about this change as you are, if not more so. And if you go back to the way you were before you changed, Love will go back with you. Love does not maintain a list of your flaws and weaknesses. Love believes you. — Augusten Burroughs

Dear Pighead, The reason I am so distant is because, well, there are two reasons actually. The first reason is my drinking. I require alcohol, nightly. And nothing can get in the way. The second reason is your disease. I can't stand the idea of getting close to you, or closer, only to have you up and die on me, pulling the carpet out from under my life. You're my best friend. The best friend I ever had. I have to protect that. I don't call you or see you much because I'm killing you off now, while it's easier. Because I can still talk to you. It makes sense to me to separate now, while you're still healthy, as opposed to having it just happen to me one night out of the blue. I'm trying to evenly distribute the pain of loss. As opposed to taking it in one lump sum. — Augusten Burroughs

I thought, I can't do advertising any more, so I was downloading all these PDF applications from community colleges. And I thought, I'll become a paramedic. I'll get a two-year associate degree, if I can get in. — Augusten Burroughs

And then just as suddenly, I felt absolutely nothing. It was like a door quickly opened, showing me what horrible feelings I had inside, and then slammed shut again so I wouldn't have to actually face them. In many ways I felt I was living the life of a doctor in the ER. I was learning to block out all emotions in order to deal with the situation. — Augusten Burroughs

It is an awful, just sickening feeling, I discovered, to live with somebody, to exist in the midst of sharing a life, only to realize it is utterly doomed. It was botulism of the soul. I'd had such ambition for building a life together, because I wanted that strength of character and security. But I had overlooked the most important thing: he wasn't right for me. I wasn't right for him. Merely wanting us to be right and good together wasn't enough. — Augusten Burroughs

Normal people who weren't raised by mentally ill goats probably took the feeling of safety for granted. They only noticed when they suddenly felt unsafe. When the hands reach up for under the bed and grab their ankles, they scream, whereas I'm like Wait, can you scratch my knee before you kill me? — Augusten Burroughs

If you hate your life, you haven't seen enough of it. If you hate your life, it's because your life is too small and it doesn't fit you. — Augusten Burroughs

You know, sometimes just giving yourself permission to feel any emotion without judgment or censorship can lessen the intensity of those negative emotions. — Augusten Burroughs

Fact: upon locking yourself our of your apartment you will immediately need to use the bathroom. Fact: and then you will stand in place and watch your door. You will just stare. As though rebuffed by it. As though it has done this to you. — Augusten Burroughs

All I know for sure is that I have accidentally fallen through a wormhole in the universe and stumbled into someone else's grim life. — Augusten Burroughs