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The problem with not having anybody to tell you what to do, I understood, is that there was nobody to tell you what not to do.

Augusten Burroughs

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Augusten Burroughs
Age: 58
Born: 1965
Born: October 23
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Scissors
Anybody
Understood
Nobody
Tell
Problem

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If I were a serial killer, I would not be the kind that stabs and then eats the victim. I would be the kind that hides in a tree and shoots at the aerobics class.
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Other people sound flat to my ear their words just hang in the air. But when my mother says something, the ends curl.
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There is no such thing as too ordinary to write about, whether that's life or a scene in a novel. What's interesting to people, whether it's memoir or fiction, is the truth.
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Our lives are one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity.
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Although I was able to maintain a pleasant expression, I was mentally throwing up in her face.
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The most mortifying fact of my life is something that happened when I was fourteen and I have never admitted to anyone: not to friends nor therapists not even in rehab when we were detailing our own personal spirals of shame did I confess. It is this: I am a graduate of the Barbizon School of Modeling.
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If you find you require willpower, you aren't ready to lose weight.
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I never listen to music when I write.
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I think I love him, but I also think that you can love people who aren't good for you.
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The truth about not having everything you need, not being fully equipped or qualified or allowed is that these limits are the nebula of creative genius. When you have total freedom i.e: no limits at all. You stop trying to make the best of things
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You would be amazed by what you can give up, lose, or break, and yet still be a person who gets happy over brownies.
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Most of us have love in our lives. Most of us love other people are are ourselves loved by others. But make no mistake: you are alone in the world. You were born alone, even if you were born conjoined. And you die alone, unable to bring a single person with you.
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There's a lot about being A Writer that has nothing to do with writing. That's one thing I've discovered. You've got to meet with the sales force, and you've got to have all these luncheons, and be gracious, and you've got to give a lot of presentations and you've got to give a lot of speeches, and you've got to be on tour.
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Fact: upon locking yourself our of your apartment you will immediately need to use the bathroom. Fact: and then you will stand in place and watch your door. You will just stare. As though rebuffed by it. As though it has done this to you.
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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
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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.
Augusten Burroughs
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My brother was born without taste or the desire to be professionally lit.
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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.
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There is no shame in being hungry for another person. There is no shame in wanting very much to share your life with somebody.
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You can make almost anything a learning or positive experience. I think I offer a good example of how to make the most out of what life gives you and how to keep moving on.
Augusten Burroughs