Top 350 Augusten Burroughs Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “You’re supposed to go to a meeting. I mean, as much as you hate them or if they feel stupid or you just don’t want to go. The thing is, if you go to a meeting, you won’t drink that day. It’s like a minibrainwash. It kind of fixes you for a little while.” But then I say, “Of course if I’m really wallowing in self-pity, then I’ll tell myself, ‘Pighead would give anything to feel this uncomfortable right now.’ ” So there’s always the auto–guilt trip method.”

— Augusten Burroughs

252. “Being busy is not the same as being focused. Being focused means being here.”

— Augusten Burroughs

253. “I knew that he was as reliable as a mathematical formula.”

— Augusten Burroughs

254. “I never could have written the screenplay because I would have been forced to learn new software and I can’t learn one more thing.”

— Augusten Burroughs

255. “See, alcoholism is exactly like bubble gum. You know when you blow a bubble and it bursts, some of the gum sticks to you chin? What’s the only thing that gets the bubble gum off your chin? Bubble gum. You have to take the bubble gum out of your mouth and press it against the gum on your chin and it’ll pick it up. Only an alcoholic can treat another alcoholic. Only other alcoholics can get you sober.”

— Augusten Burroughs

256. “When I ate vanilla frosting straight from the can, I could feel God standing right nest to me like a real best friend, watching, and smiling, and wishing he had a mouth.”

— Augusten Burroughs

257. “There are times in life when logic and reason and probability must be recognized, but then ignored.”

— Augusten Burroughs

258. “Freshly brainwashed from rehab, I carry the bottle into the bathroom. I hold it up to the light. See the pretty bottle? Isn’t it beautiful? Yes, it’s beautiful. I unscrew the cap and pour it into the toilet. I flush twice. And then I think, why did I flush twice? The answer, is of course, because I truly do know myself. I cannot be sure I won’t attempt to drink from the toilet, like a dog.”

— Augusten Burroughs

259. “What little factual information I absorbed in my life was gleaned from lectures the Professor gave to Gilligan. For.”

— Augusten Burroughs

260. “The most I would do was use the shadow tool in Photoshop to bring out the muscular rips in my stomach, which were honestly there. Beneath the fat.”

— Augusten Burroughs

261. “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.”

— Augusten Burroughs

262. “Feeling like you cannot stand one more minute doesn’t mean you can’t. You can, actually. It’s incredibly easy to stop smoking. And it’s horrifically uncomfortable. Then not quite horrifically uncomfortable. Then it’s damn uncomfortable. Then it’s uncomfortable. Then it’s not as uncomfortable as it was at first. Then it’s not so bad. And then you don’t smoke anymore. And you don’t miss it.”

— Augusten Burroughs

263. “You can see self-pity every day if you live near a playground like I do. Little kids trip or get shoved and they fall over all the time. Usually, they don’t appear to be hurt. They look surprised to see that what was just an instant ago beneath their shoes is now pressed up against their nose. Little kids also know that injuries are an opportunity for extra affection. So whenever you see a little kid take a spill, they’ll look around to verify a nearby adult presence and then they’ll let it rip.”

— Augusten Burroughs

264. “I thought, This is how it feels inside the right decision.”

— Augusten Burroughs

265. “When you feel spontaneously excited by something – a new career you never thought about, a haircut you see in a magazine and want – shame is the voice that brings you “back down to earth.”

— Augusten Burroughs

266. “It was so extraordinarily out of the ordinary.”

— Augusten Burroughs

267. “With my own memoirs, they are truthful, and I write everything fully expecting to some day end up televised on Court TV, and I’m fully prepared to be challenged legally on it. Everything I write is the truth and I know that I would win.”

— Augusten Burroughs

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

— Augusten Burroughs

269. “I was desperate to discover what nothing felt like. It was the absence of something that attracted me. It was the start. Everything important originated with nothingness.”

— Augusten Burroughs

270. “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.”

— Augusten Burroughs

271. “My life came complete with a factory-installed biological brother seven years my senior.”

— Augusten Burroughs

272. “We have no control over anything large in life; only the small details are under our direct management. But even then, we lack any real authority.”

— Augusten Burroughs

273. “What I am certain of is that there’s something wonky going on beneath the surface of what we call reality. Things are not as they appear. They are much, much more.”

— Augusten Burroughs

274. “It was time to leave. He was insufferable, had toilet problems, looked demented to begin with, and now he was the accomplice to a cat killer. Yet did I leave? No, I sat there. And I thought, What has happened to me? Why am I not rising up off the sofa? Why am I not leaving?”

— Augusten Burroughs

275. “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.”

— Augusten Burroughs

276. “My goal was to get through the day as fast as possible. I worked fast because I wanted to be done. I wanted to be done because I wanted to go home to my nest and drink.”

— Augusten Burroughs

277. “I placed my hand against the side of his precious, electric face and felt the stubble beneath my fingers. I was overwhelmed with the lust and wonder of it all.”

— Augusten Burroughs

278. “Lately, I am receiving numerous calls each night from telemarketers. They’re calling with the frequent urgency of dumped boyfriends. At this point, I cannot help but wonder, is the entire telemarketing industry one big, jilted, clingy gay guy?”

— Augusten Burroughs

279. “Augusten very distant tonight. Probably because of my games.”

— Augusten Burroughs

280. “We had a wealth of something we didn’t want, but the wealth itself was intoxicating and we invented games just so we could experience the sensation of having too much of something.”

— Augusten Burroughs

281. “I tend to really enjoy being swept up in fiction. I love a good story and I admire fiction authors.”

— Augusten Burroughs

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

282. “Marriage is overdone. As long as there are people, people are going to find it interesting.”

— Augusten Burroughs

283. “We did not pass one other Mercury Merkur XR4Ti the entire way.”

— Augusten Burroughs

284. “Normal people who weren’t raised by mentally ill goats probably took the feeling of safety for granted. They only noticed when they suddenly felt unsafe. When the hands reach up for under the bed and grab their ankles, they scream, whereas I’m like “Wait, can you scratch my knee before you kill me?”

— Augusten Burroughs

285. “He likes people because he likes to share in conversations. I like people when they have large checks for me.”

— Augusten Burroughs

286. “I hate when you play therapist. Especially with your accent. It makes everything you say sound so BBC.”

— Augusten Burroughs

287. “I was struck with a bolt of distilled horror like I have never known before. Far worse than suddenly finding yourself walking through a prison cafeteria wearing Daisy Duke shorts and a Jane Fonda headband.”

— Augusten Burroughs

288. “I like the bad one better,′ I said. ‘She had flying monkeys, and the good one was tacky and seemed kind of dumb.”

— Augusten Burroughs

289. “By engaging with the person you’re with. Which means, not thinking while they’re speaking and not forming your answer as they are in the middle of asking the question. Engaging with the person means following carefully what they say, going for the full ride of their dialogue. So that you don’t skip over a nuance by mistake. This is what’ll keep you from zoning out, avoiding eye contact, looking at the wall like a freak, or sweating too much.”

— Augusten Burroughs

290. “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.”

— Augusten Burroughs

291. “I sat up and my mouth tasted horrible, like stale pot, beer and Cheetos. The exact combination of ingredients that had caused me to pass into unconsciousness on Natalie’s floor.”

— Augusten Burroughs

292. “I realized I could do anything to him and he would never hate me. I could never drive him away, spoil things between us, or otherwise sour things in his eyes, because he already knew how horrible I could be, yet he loved me, anyway.”

— Augusten Burroughs

293. “Despite evidence to the contrary, I hated drinking to the point that I misplaced really big slabs of time.”

— Augusten Burroughs

294. “In a way, I am a psychological transsexual, always trying to “pass” for a normal person but being clocked every time.”

— Augusten Burroughs

295. “So if you think the job really suits you, be you.”

— Augusten Burroughs

296. “Now he was the dish of wrapped peppermints next to the cash register that I didn’t want because they were free. Because.”

— Augusten Burroughs

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

— Augusten Burroughs

298. “There is always dishonesty at the heart of unhappiness.”

— Augusten Burroughs

299. “The best person you can be is the person you are when you are alone on a random Thursday. That’s who you are.”

— Augusten Burroughs

300. “Optimism sprouts from the knowledge that you are in control of your own life, not your past and not those around you. Part of being in control is taking responsibility for how you feel. This means not just admitting to uncomfortable feelings but then examining your circumstances to see what can be done to change these feelings at the source. Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping.”

— Augusten Burroughs