Augusten Burroughs Quotes

“I think I love him, but I also think that you can love people who aren't good for you.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“… handsome people are always interesting to watch. But a handsome person in crisis is riveting.”

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

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

“I like flaws and feel more comfortable around people who have them. I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”

“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.”

“This is what you should know about losing someone you love. They do not travel alone. You go with them.”

“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.”

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

“The truth is that nobody is owed an apology for anything. Apologies are lovely when they happen. But they change nothing. They do not reverse actions or correct damage. They are merely nice to hear.”

“You deserve to need me, not to have me.”

“I hate feelings. Why does sobriety have to come with feelings?”

“I came to think that maybe God was what you believed in because you needed to feel you weren’t alone. Maybe God was simply that part of yourself that was always there and always strong, even when you were not.”

“Stars should not be seen alone. That's why there are so many. Two people should stand together and look at them. One person alone will surely miss the good ones.”

“I am prone to envy. It is one of my three default emotions, the others being greed and rage. I have also experienced compassion and generosity, but only fleetingly and usually while drunk, so I have little memory.”

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

“I just look at her and she creeps me out. She looks like she would eat a baby. Not that she's fat. She just looks hungry in some dangerous way that can't be explained. She's always so nice and friendly. Exactly the disposition of a baby killer.”

“Think of your head as an unsafe neighborhood; don't go there alone.”

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

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

“When you have your health, you have everything. When you do not have your health, nothing else matters at all.”

“Turn off the light," she says as she walks away, creating a smallthat smells sweet and chemical. It makes me sad because it's the smell she makes when she's leaving.”

“And I began to let him go. Hour by hour. Days into months. It was a physical sensation, like letting out the string of a kite. Except that the string was coming from my center.”

“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.”

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

“Do not wait for the healing to arrive. It will never come. The holes will never leave or be filled with anything at all.

But holes are interesting things.”

“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 doesn't' fit you.”

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

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

“The truth is humbling, terrifying, and often exhilarating. It blows the doors off the hinges and fills the world with fresh air.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“I hate news and information and anything that threatens to puncture the bubble of oblivion in which I live.”

“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.”

“My mistake was in underestimating the emotional force of a song you have already hear a thousand times.”

“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.”

“Now I can addto my list of life's accomplishments.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Thanksgiving was nothing more than a pilgrim-created obstacle in the way of Christmas; a dead bird in the street that forced a brief detour.”

“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.”

“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”

“Because here is the truth: If you want to have a chance at meeting somebody with whom you are genuinely compatible, never put your best foot forward.”

“Throwing things horrified me. I suffered extreme, paralyzing anxiety when it came to anything remotely athletic. I wouldn't even run to catch the school bus because I knew I'd trip and then get teased for a year.”

“You would be amazed by what you can give up, lose, or break, and yet still be a person who gets happy over brownies.”

“He was raised without a proper diagnosis.”

“It turned out I had always been a smoker. I just hadn't had any cigarettes.”

“Nothing made sense to me anymore. I knew I was young, I knew I was small. But I was worried that I might already be ruined.”

“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.”

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

“Tracy, the leader of the CDH group, looks at me with eyes that seem to belong to someone three times her age. It's something beyond wisdom, all the way to insanity and back. It's like her eyes are scarred from all the things she's seen.”

“His laugh is made if porch swings and lemonade”

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

“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.”