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).
I think writers tend to be experience junkies, and I think they also tend to want to be on the outside looking in.
Like every child, I adored her. Until I formed a brain and got to know her.
I never question the way I write. Writing is the only thing that's without seams for me. It's an effort to talk because my pictures have to be turned into these sounds. It's an effort to be alive. It's work. But writing is wonderful.
After was better. Before was only there so After could happen.
There is nothing about myself that I wouldn't reveal or write about. I don't care how horrendous or ridiculous I may appear in person or in print. There is great freedom in not caring what other people think.
You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.
As a writer, you can't allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.
I once read about a guy who lost his arms in a fire. The nurse took pity on him and gave him a hand job. I don't even get that.
The only other people who have had experiences similar to those of this man were locked up inside institutions for the criminally insane. The difference is, this guy gets business cards.
My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day.
I realized I could really become hooked on these happy pills. They gave me a glorious feeling of general well-being and didn't make me fat, like alcohol. I wondered if there was any harm in being addicted to only these.
My mistake was in underestimating the emotional force of a song you have already hear a thousand times.
We haven't slept together. But we've napped
I knew that if I wrote a new book every six months or every year, if I continued to read great books, eventually I would write something worthy of publication. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confident that it would happen.
The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.
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.
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.
Applause is a constant thing in AA. It's how we buy drinks for each other.
I'm grateful for a lot of things. One is not being a drunk wreck. Or losing all four limbs in some ridiculous East Village bus accident that I was so destined for.
This is what happens when you go against the grain of truth. You get splinters later on.