Augusten Burroughs quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Augusten Burroughs

Augusten Burroughs Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Augusten Burroughs on Wise Famous Quotes.

But I can also write in crappy motel rooms, while standing in line, or sitting in the dentist's chair.

I saw a monkey walking on a leash and thought it was an ugly foreign child.

How could something have no end, and if it had no end exactly where did it leave us?

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

There's never a false note in a Berg novel.

My worth depended on where exactly the decimal was placed among the zeroes.

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

It terrified me to consider: What if, as a grown-up, I craved another body beside me as still as this one? What then?

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

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

Bad news should be followed with soup. Then a nap.

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

Reading takes solitude and it takes focus.

I discovered the bleeding when he licked my hand and left a swath of blood behind, death's autograph.

This is what happens when you go against the grain of truth: you get splinters later on.

I felt deeply tricked. Stunned. And furious. I also felt my default emotion: numbness.

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

As my friend Amy observed: "Divorce is like a Polaroid picture. What truly happened will develop over time and you will see.

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

If you find you require willpower, you aren't ready to lose weight.

Part of me felt deep compassion. And another part felt like, You fucker.

It wasn't like he was holding me so much as trying to hold onto something.

Imperfections are attractive when their owners are happy with them.

I love to both give and receive very old books.

I don't think it's any more deceptive than wearing four-inch come-fuck-me pumps when one has no intention of ever fucking anybody.

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

No matter how awful something is, you can always sell tickets.

But my favorite band is Curbside Life, out of Chicago.

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

I'm tired of living in the shallow end of the pool.

He was raised without a proper diagnosis.

You need to grab your dream out of the sky like it's a kite and pinch the string through your fingers until you reach the spool.

Just as I had long suspected, a person didn't really need math for anything anyway. Maybe some people did. Some limited people.

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

No wonder I had found that woman so offensive. Sometimes things feel that bad. Sometimes you just feel like shit.

Like every child, I adored her. Until I formed a brain and got to know her.

After was better. Before was only there so After could happen.

If i wasn't an accident mustn't I be a crushing disappointment?

The most valuable moments and experiences that life has to offer are found only along its most treacherous paths.

What is lint? How does it find hair dryers and navels?

Delay is a gun pointed at the temple of confidence.

All a rainbow is is light that walks behind a raindrop and its colors fall out.

Dutch isn't easy for the outsider to learn, because it's spoken from the back of the throat at the trigger spot for the gag reflex.

Augusten very distant tonight. Probably because of my games.

We haven't slept together. But we've napped

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.

It was a salad bar of phobias

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.

We never sampled our drugs because we were afraid of them, but to admit it aloud would have broken the spell.

You deserve to need me, not to have me.

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

He likes people because he likes to share in conversations. I like people when they have large checks for me.

There is helium in his tone of voice, a lightness that means mischief.

It is always safe to see yourself truthfully. You never have to be ashamed of yourself, with yourself.

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.

He continues to smile expectantly. I take a step back. I don't want to catch whatever he has. He is a disturbing out-of-uniform Santa.

Red hair is great. It's rare, and therefore superior.

The events of the past cannot be fully understood when you are the only element of the past actively engaged in reliving it.

Being busy is not the same as being focused. Being focused means being here.

Memorization is not the same as remembering.

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

I wouldn't want to waste any of my brain cells on forgiving if it's holding me back.

Signs with missing letters can only mean bad things.

People believe in god because they can't think to be alone.

My attraction had been immediate and profound. And it had nothing to do with the way he looked. My attraction was to what resided between his lines.

You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.

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

And in my mind, this settles the issue. I would never drink cologne, and am therefore not an alcoholic.

I will please shut the hell up the day you please drop the hell dead

So if you think the job really suits you, be you.

I realized I'd only seen him at night in dim, flattering restaurant lighting. The sun was not his friend.

The most I would do was use the shadow tool in Photoshop to bring out the muscular rips in my stomach, which were honestly there. Beneath the fat.

You must hang onto the scraps of the bucking moment as if your sanity and life depended on it - because actually they do.

His laugh is made of porch swings and lemonade.

I really look at my childhood as being one giant rusty tuna can that I continue to recycle in many different shapes.

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.

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

But I am not here ironically; I am here sincerely.

I thought, This is how it feels inside the right decision.

The more obsessed one is with getting thin, the more certain it becomes that one will never get there.

My life came complete with a factory-installed biological brother seven years my senior.

The year I snuck an interracial lesbian couple into the background of an American Airlines commercial, I was feeling particularly flush.

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

The dark side of blogging is, of course, people can be (and are) just savage and uncivilized, deeply cruel and fully unaccountable.

She reminded me of a scatterbrained old Cadillac that had been driven into the ground but somehow kept on starting, without fuss.

My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day.

How can you really miss something when you never experienced it?

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

If you loathe your job, the situation is improved if you can do it in your underwear. Drunk.

In a way, I am a psychological transsexual, always trying to "pass" for a normal person but being clocked every time.

You know, American alcoholics are pretty fucking hard to insult.

Bookman isn't a stable man. He has a lot of problems that run very, very deep.
But he was really good at giving head.

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

I made very good money and spent all of it every week. I lived paycheck to paycheck ...

And I hope she does not live in a dark world. Because even the most terrible loss doesn't have to make you darker; it can make you deeper.

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

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.

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.

I suppose home is, for me, more of a state of mind. It's really more of about being where I want to be with people I care about.

Everybody in recovery smokes. If you don't like smoking, don't even bother trying to get sober. Just stay drunk.