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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

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Augusten Burroughs
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: October 23
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Really
Secret
Lock
Think
Literature
Locks
Thinking
Future
Author
Life
Write
Plan
Away
Plans
Enough
Writer
Writing
Study
Work
Alone

More quotes by 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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Thanksgiving was nothing more than a pilgrim-created obstacle in the way of Christmas a dead bird in the street that forced a brief detour.
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.
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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
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As a young child I had Santa and Jesus all mixed up. I could identify Coke or Pepsi with just one sip, but I could not tell you for sure why they strapped Santa to a cross. Had he missed a house? Had a good little girl somewhere in the world not received the doll he'd promised her, making the father angry?
Augusten Burroughs
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Bad news should be followed with soup. Then a nap.
Augusten Burroughs
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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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Decisions are beautiful. They are the evidence of thought and care. Decisions are the polishing cloths of life.
Augusten Burroughs
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All of us are richer and more fascinating and more complex than we can ever know.
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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I felt a bottomless sadness. So completely alone. Like one of my stuffed animals at home that I was too old for now, that sat on the shelf in my closet, mashed against the back wall.
Augusten Burroughs
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There's never a false note in a Berg novel.
Augusten Burroughs
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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.
Augusten Burroughs
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My attraction had been immediate and profound. And it had nothing to do with the way he looked. My attraction was to what resided between his lines.
Augusten Burroughs
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Confidence is a reduction of your own interest in whether others are thinking about you and if so, what they're thinking.
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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Never work with children, puppies or bulimics.
Augusten Burroughs
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Writing has enriched my life in ways I never imaged.
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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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!
Augusten Burroughs