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Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping.

Augusten Burroughs

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Augusten Burroughs
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: October 23
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Real
Earned
Optimism
Labor
Emotional
Involved
Talk
Give
Pep
Giving
Housekeeping

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Imperfections are attractive when their owners are happy with them.
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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.
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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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I think people might think, oh, I don't want to approach the big famous author because it's embarrassing, but then they think for two seconds about it and realize, this is, like, a toilet bowl reader.
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After was better. Before was only there so After could happen.
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I don't think writers - in general - ever achieve the fame of movie stars. For the simple reason that only a fraction of the population reads. But I guess there are exceptions.
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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.
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I did not consider him to be any kind of a genius. I considered him deeply lacking in the area that mattered most in life. Star quality.
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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.
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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.
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The past doesn't haunt us, we haunt the past.
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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.
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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.
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There's never a false note in a Berg novel.
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I've just finished my next collection, Possible Side Effects, and I'm now working on a collection of holiday stories as well as a memoir about my relationship with my father.
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Reading takes solitude and it takes focus.
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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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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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but I am not here ironically I am here sincerely.
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And I hope she does not live in a dark world. Because even the most terrible loss doesn't have to make you darker it can make you deeper.
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