Augusten Xon Burroughs (born Christopher Richter Robison, October 23, 1965) is an American writer known for his New York Times bestselling memoir Running with Scissors (2002).
Because I've lived in one room my entire life, working at the same table that you use to pay bills at and eat at. It's going to be nice to have actual space.
Applause is a constant thing in AA. It's how we buy drinks for each other.
No matter what I've written, someone somewhere has come up to me and said, "Me too. " The truth can be offensive, but it's always nourishing, in a way. You recognize it. You can feel it. And even if [readers] think, "My god, I would never get in those situations," within those ridiculous circumstances that I have created for myself, they know the way I respond is probably what they would do too.
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
I thought, I can't do advertising any more, so I was downloading all these PDF applications from community colleges. And I thought, I'll become a paramedic. I'll get a two-year associate degree, if I can get in.
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 hate feelings. Why does sobriety have to come with feelings?
When people meet me, many times they're very surprised because they expect someone who is kind of wacky with seven piercings and very hip and cool and New York City, and I'm not.
And human instinct is ancient and reliable, utterly mysterious and possibly capable of great genius. I believe that refined, fluent instincts are a person's most valuable asset. My own instincts have repeatedly guided me against the grain of logic and probability. When I have trusted and followed their direction, they have never been wrong. I don't know how or why. But I know that every significant experience-positive or negative-sharpens them and makes them more accurate.
After I got my coffee, I leaned against a stop sign and sipped, pretending it was a normal day and I was only up this early so that I could go running and not because I'd just been on a killing spree.
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.
Saying just the right thing after a considerable, awkward pause is far less effective than saying the wrong thing with perfect timing. I'm telling you.
[Christmas] holidays are a heavy, heavy time. We make light of them with our red and green and our stockings and candy canes, but people think heavy thoughts over the holidays because that's when you're thinking about family. Are we close? Or are we not as close as other people?
I don't have a fixed routine. I write every day but I don't "write" every day, if that makes any sense. In other words, I email with my friends constantly and sometimes I'll pull out something I've written and save it.
Are you one of those people who says on a first date, 'I'm really not in a hurry to meet somebody, I figure if it happens, it happens'? Because those are the most desperate people of all. I'm just saying this so that if you are this person, you aren't hiding it from anybody. There is no shame in being hungry for another person. There is no shame in wanting very much to share your life with somebody.
Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer. Glen had been born on the day after Christmas. "My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that's all," he explained. But we knew this was a lie. Glen's parents just wrapped a couple of his Christmas presents in birthday-themed wrapping paper, stuck some candles in a supermarket cake, and had a dinner of Christmas leftovers.
You are allowed to be alive. You are allowed to be somebody different. You are allowed to not say goodbye to anybody or explain a single thing to anyone, ever.
The more obsessed one is with getting thin, the more certain it becomes that one will never get there.
Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.
In order for us [people] to progress, we need brilliance and brilliance isn't fair and it's not polite and we can't grow it. It happens. Genius happens and it doesn't always happen in a zip code where we can access it. Therefore, we kind of need [Internet] not to keep tabs on everybody but we need to give them access to everybody else.