571 Quotes by Augusten Burroughs

I am tired from having lived seventeen different lives, compressed into the space of one.

Two hundred tons of ore is a great amount of ore. If, after a reasonable amount of time and effort you remain unhappily single, my suggestion is that you employ the services of a cat or a dog. Both cats and dogs are known hiding places of soul mates. They are also very, very good at getting strangers to talk to them in kind voices. Which, it should be noted, could be of some use to those who might otherwise be too shy to step forward and say, hello.

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

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.

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.

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

There is always dishonesty at the heart of unhappiness.

I’ve just finished my next collection, Possible Side Effects, and I’m now working on a collection of holiday stories as well as a memoir about my relationship with my father.

I had always had the oddest feeling, consider it knowledge, that if I were ever to find myself inside the cockpit of a 767 with two dead piolets and afew hundred passengers in the cabin behind me, I would absolutely be able to land the ninety-thousand-pound jet.