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 More Quotes by Augusten Burroughs More Quotes From Augusten Burroughs So we can be filled with holes and loss and wide expanses of unhealed geography - and we can also be excited by life and in love and content at the exact same moment. Augusten Burroughs excited moments loss Applause is a constant thing in AA. It's how we buy drinks for each other. Augusten Burroughs applause constant drink As a writer, you can't allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward. Augusten Burroughs luxury giving-up writing I can't tell you how much I love Target and Costco, that kind of culture, because it's something I never felt a part of. I've always felt like a tourist because I have never fit in anywhere. Augusten Burroughs tourism tourists culture All of us are richer and more fascinating and more complex than we can ever know. Augusten Burroughs complexes fascinating knows My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day. Augusten Burroughs ritual down-and writing The past doesn't haunt us, we haunt the past. Augusten Burroughs past My mother is from Cairo, Georgia. This makes everything she says sound like it went through a curling iron. Augusten Burroughs iron mother sound Our lives are one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity. Augusten Burroughs fast-food misery curiosity I love you," she said, and I knew she meant it because she spoke the words from the heart at the center of her chest. This, at least, had not been left behind at the hospital. Augusten Burroughs spokes love-you heart The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall. Augusten Burroughs crazy order fall I saw a monkey walking on a leash and thought it was an ugly foreign child. Augusten Burroughs monkeys ugly children He was raised without a proper diagnosis. Augusten Burroughs diagnosis raised I felt deeply tricked. Stunned. And furious. I also felt my default emotion: numbness. Augusten Burroughs default numbness emotion I missed him so much that I had physical sensations of loss, all over my body. Like one minute I was missing an arm, the next my spleen. It was making me feel sick, like throwing up. Augusten Burroughs sick missing loss but I am not here ironically; I am here sincerely. Augusten Burroughs sincerely Nobody's trying to kill you, Deirdre. You're killing yourself. Augusten Burroughs killing-yourself killing trying 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 detours christmas bird (The new boyfriend) knows I write every day for hours but has no idea that all I’m writing about is me. It seems wiser to let him think I’m an aspiring novelist instead of just an alcoholic with a year of sobriety who spends eight hours a day writing about the other 16. Augusten Burroughs eight writing thinking In the same way that a tornado rips the roof off a double-wide trailer, leaving the occupants dazed and staring at the clouds from the splinters of what used to be their living room, it was over. Augusten Burroughs rip leaving clouds
