Augusten Burroughs: Likeness

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“You have an incredible body." He reaches out to touch my stomach. I feel no pleasure in his compliment or his touch, only impatience. This is the only feeling. I feel like the paper on which my mood chart is printed.”

“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.”