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You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.

Augusten Burroughs

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Augusten Burroughs
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: October 23
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Past
Live
Mind
Prisoner
Inside
Cannot

More quotes by Augusten Burroughs

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When I first thought of being a writer I had visions of stacks of books in stores with my name on them, that sort of thing. But I never imagined this would be the reaction.
Augusten Burroughs
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We were young. We were bored. And the old electroshock therapy machine was just under the stairs in a box next to the Hoover.
Augusten Burroughs
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But then, look at me. My brain is incorrectly formed, and I'm shaped like a tube. Plus, I'm an alcoholic, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, was raised in a cult and have no education. So, really, if you think about it, the only thing that separates me from the guy with the stinky foot and no teeth is a book deal and some cologne.
Augusten Burroughs
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In the same way that a tornado rips the roof off a double-wide trailer, leaving the occupants dazed and staring at the clouds from the splinters of what used to be their living room, it was over.
Augusten Burroughs
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The dark side of blogging is, of course, people can be (and are) just savage and uncivilized, deeply cruel and fully unaccountable.
Augusten Burroughs
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While I liked hamsters, too, the Habitrail cage was expensive. Even I could see that the interconnecting boxes, tubes, and spheres could easily bankrupt a family and lead to addiction later in life. Because, how would you know when to stop? How could you stop? An entire city could be built with a Habitrail.
Augusten Burroughs
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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.
Augusten Burroughs
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I was on the cover of a lot of newspapers. I was on the cover of USA Today for every single day for a month. I was on the masthead, so I tend to get recognized a lot, and in weird places. It's always flattering, and it's always odd. It's always at the worst possible time.
Augusten Burroughs
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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.
Augusten Burroughs
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The more obsessed one is with getting thin, the more certain it becomes that one will never get there.
Augusten Burroughs
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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.
Augusten Burroughs
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It's weird - sort of not terribly wise - to take a book that was successful and then change its cover.
Augusten Burroughs
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Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.
Augusten Burroughs
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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.
Augusten Burroughs
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Marriage is overdone. As long as there are people, people are going to find it interesting.
Augusten Burroughs
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I'm not going to waste my energy looking into the eyes of someone like the guy who blew my legs off trying to find a way to forgive him for doing something that horrible when there are way more productive ways I could be spending my life. You've got to focus on moving on.
Augusten Burroughs
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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
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Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I'm an imposter. The fact is, I am not like other people.
Augusten Burroughs
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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
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You need to grab your dream out of the sky like it's a kite and pinch the string through your fingers until you reach the spool.
Augusten Burroughs