Augusten Burroughs Quotes

What police officer would dare ticket Death's minivan?

We were young. We were bored. And the old electroshock therapy machine was just under the stairs in a box next to the Hoover.

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

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.

your mind is like an unsafe neighborhood; don't go there alone.

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

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

You deserve to need me, not to have me.

Nobody's trying to kill you, Deirdre. You're killing yourself.

Our lives are one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity.

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.

The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall.

So we can be filled with holes and loss and wide expanses of unhealed geography - and we can also be excited by life and in love and content at the exact same moment.

Even when we lose an arm or a leg, there's not less of us but more. Human experience weighs more than human tissue.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

All children should be loved, protected, nurtured --emotionally and intellectually-- respected, and never, under any circumstances, underestimated.

I never listen to music when I write.

My mother began to go crazy. Not in a 'Let's paint the kitchen red!' sort of way. But crazy in a 'gas oven, toothpaste sandwhich, I am God' sort of way.

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

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

Other people sound flat to my ear; their words just hang in the air. But when my mother says something, the ends curl.

I don't believe in the concept of a soul mate. Because we are all unique, but we're also simply too similar.

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

There's not enough of me left over.

Reading takes solitude and it takes focus.

Life would be fabric-softener, tuna-salad-on-white, PTA-meeting normal.

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

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

I loved most when his eyelashes twitched and he blinked, and suddenly happiness was there inside his eyes. Unmistakable. Like a single word printed on a clean white page.

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.

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

He was raised without a proper diagnosis.

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

I'm always prepared for the worst.

I read a lot of science books - I love cosmology, quantum theory, particle physics. So my idea of a great read would probably put you directly into a coma.

I don't really think of my blog as a real blog. It's a lame blog. It's more like my when-the-mood-strikes update, or smoke signal.

What I think of blogs is just this: Some are beautifully written and many are not. But even blogs that aren't necessarily "well" written are great for the person writing them.

My subconscious does the writing; I don't have control over that.

I could write another collection of personal essays from what has happened to me in the last year alone. I don't seek out my material - it finds me. I am magnetic, somehow.

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.

I don't read memoirs. But if you write a memoir, I would think you'd want people to know, "O.K., look, I've taken some liberties here." It's just a matter of being open with your readers.

It's weird - sort of not terribly wise - to take a book that was successful and then change its cover.

I tend to really enjoy being swept up in fiction. I love a good story and I admire fiction authors.

I don't think writers - in general - ever achieve the fame of movie stars. For the simple reason that only a fraction of the population reads. But I guess there are exceptions.

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.

I feel like they are two different things, and when I write books, they're just books. If they can be movies that's okay. But I would write a novel that couldn't be a film.