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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

Augusten Burroughs

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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

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We haven't slept together. But we've napped
Augusten Burroughs
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I realized I could really become hooked on these happy pills. They gave me a glorious feeling of general well-being and didn't make me fat, like alcohol. I wondered if there was any harm in being addicted to only these.
Augusten Burroughs
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Some damage is too severe, some harm endures. And what you have to do is accept it. And by accept it I mean, don’t be the paralyzed person in the bed who is waiting to walk again. Realize, it’s never gonna happen. And find some other way to get around –swing from a vine, get a Mad Max wheelchair. Anything but…wait.
Augusten Burroughs
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My mother began to go crazy. Not in a 'Let's paint the kitchen red!' sort of way. But crazy in a 'gas oven, toothpaste sandwhich, I am God' sort of way.
Augusten Burroughs
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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.
Augusten Burroughs
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But even with my minimal amount of fame, there are certain perks. Recently, I was at a movie premier, and at the party after the movie, Meryl Streep was loose, walking around the room like a normal person. Absolutely nothing was preventing me from lunging toward her and shrieking Dingoes ate my baby! Dingoes ate my baby!
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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.
Augusten Burroughs
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My subconscious does the writing I don't have control over that.
Augusten Burroughs
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Not crazy in a 'let's paint the kitchen bright red!' sort of way. But crazy in a 'gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God' sort of way. Gone were the days when she would stand on the deck lighting lemon-scented candles without then having to eat the wax.p28
Augusten Burroughs
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I don't have a fixed routine. I write every day but I don't write every day, if that makes any sense. In other words, I email with my friends constantly and sometimes I'll pull out something I've written and save it.
Augusten Burroughs
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Writing has enriched my life in ways I never imaged.
Augusten Burroughs
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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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I always tried to learn Greek, but all I got out of it was, poulaki mou. [My little chicken.]
Augusten Burroughs
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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.
Augusten Burroughs
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This is how you survive the unsurvivable, this is how you lose that which you cannot bear to lose, this is how you reinvent yourself, overcome your abusers, fulfill your ambitions and meet the love of your life: by following what is true, no matter where it leads you.
Augusten Burroughs
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I've learned how to turn the adversities in my life into enriching experiences. You can actually gain a lot from adversities and they make you the person you are today.
Augusten Burroughs
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Our lives are one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity.
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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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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Long marriages have ended in ruin over tiny and insignificant grievances that were never properly aired and instead grew into a brittle barnacle of hatred.
Augusten Burroughs