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The past doesn't haunt us, we haunt the past.

Augusten Burroughs

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Augusten Burroughs
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: October 23
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Haunt
Doesn
Past

More quotes by 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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Decisions are beautiful. They are the evidence of thought and care. Decisions are the polishing cloths of life.
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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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
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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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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.
Augusten Burroughs
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My window fogs and this makes me feel like there is no world outside of the car.
Augusten Burroughs
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Although I was able to maintain a pleasant expression, I was mentally throwing up in her face.
Augusten Burroughs
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your mind is like an unsafe neighborhood don't go there alone.
Augusten Burroughs
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I was like a packet of powdered Sea Monkeys and they were like water.
Augusten Burroughs
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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
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but I am not here ironically I am here sincerely.
Augusten Burroughs
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Tracy, the leader of the CDH group, looks at me with eyes that seem to belong to someone three times her age. It's something beyond wisdom, all the way to insanity and back. It's like her eyes are scarred from all the things she's seen.
Augusten Burroughs
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I never listen to music when I write.
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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And in my mind, this settles the issue. I would never drink cologne, and am therefore not an alcoholic.
Augusten Burroughs
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After was better. Before was only there so After could happen.
Augusten Burroughs
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This is what you should know about losing someone you love. They do not travel alone. You go with them.
Augusten Burroughs
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I never get sick of writing my own stories because there's a certain comfort in knowing you will never run out of material. It's relaxing, actually, to write.
Augusten Burroughs
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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