Quote

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

Augusten Burroughs

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Augusten Burroughs
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: October 23
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Creativity
Caskets
Least
Satin
Stop
Lined
Everybody
Perfectionist
Alone
Originality
Light
Lights
Home
Perfection
Trying
Telling
Casket

More quotes by Augusten Burroughs

Image
My brother was born without taste or the desire to be professionally lit.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
I was learning that if I lived slightly in the future-what will happen next-I didn't have to feel so much about what was going on in the present.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
The more obsessed one is with getting thin, the more certain it becomes that one will never get there.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I think I love him, but I also think that you can love people who aren't good for you.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
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.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
If you find you require willpower, you aren't ready to lose weight.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
My thoughts seem thick, ketchup stuck in a bottle. Like trying to feel someone's face while wearing goosedown mittens.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
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
Image
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.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
I've overcome a lot - sexual abuse, death of a loved one, bad parents and experienced life. My nature is such I not only survived all this but I have thrived. I've always been psychologically ambitious in that I've never been willing to settle emotionally for anything less then what's needed. I've wanted more then that from life.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
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
Image
I came to think that maybe God was what you believed in because you needed to feel you weren’t alone. Maybe God was simply that part of yourself that was always there and always strong, even when you were not.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
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.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
I'm always prepared for the worst.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
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.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
So that's what I'm here to become. And suddenly, this word fills me with a brand of sadness I haven't felt since childhood. The kind of sadness you feel at the end of summer. When the fireflies are gone, the ponds have dried up and the plants are wilted, weary from being so green.
Augusten Burroughs
Image
I always tried to learn Greek, but all I got out of it was, poulaki mou. [My little chicken.]
Augusten Burroughs
Image
Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I'm an imposter. The fact is, I am not like other people.
Augusten Burroughs