"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. "
— Augusten Burroughs (Magical Thinking: True Stories)

"Although I was able to maintain a pleasant expression, I was mentally throwing up in her face."
— Augusten Burroughs

"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 (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

""I am prone to envy. It is one of my three default emotions, the others being greed and rage. I have also experienced compassion and generosity, but only fleetingly and usually while drunk, so I have little memory.""
— Augusten Burroughs

"Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I'm an imposter. The fact is, I am not like other people."
— Augusten Burroughs (Dry: A Memoir)

"I hate feelings. Why does sobriety have to come with feelings?"
— Augusten Burroughs

"We were young. We were bored. And the old electroshock therapy machine was just under the stairs in a box next to the Hoover."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running With Scissors)

"I told myself, 'All I want is a normal life'. But was that true? I wasn't so sure. Because there was a part of me that enjoyed hating school, and the drama of not going, the potential consequences whatever they were. I was intrigued by the unknown. I was even slightly thrilled that my mother was such a mess. Had I become addicted to crisis? I traced my finger along the windowsill. 'Want something normal, want something normal, want something normal', I told myself."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"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 (A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir)

"I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention. For exactly the same reason, it is sometimes satisfying to cut yourself and bleed. On those gray days where eight in the morning looks no different from noon and nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen and you are washing a glass in the sink and it breaks-accidentally-and punctures your skin. And then there is this shocking red, the brightest thing in the day, so vibrant it buzzes, this blood of yours. That is okay sometimes because at least you know you’re alive."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

""Red hair is great. It's rare, and therefore superior." "
— Augusten Burroughs

"It’s a wonder I’m even alive. Sometimes I think that. I think that I can’t believe I haven’t killed myself. But there’s something in me that just keeps going on. I think it has something to do with tomorrow, that there is always one, and that everything can change when it comes."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"I like flaws and feel more comfortable around people who have them. I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. "
— Augusten Burroughs (Magical Thinking: True Stories)

"The reason I know what we are to each other is because we fight freely and almost constantly, about even the smallest thing. In fact, once we didn't speak for an entire week because he didn't like the way I loaded his dishwasher...I can't decide if we're exact opposites, or somehow exactly the same except for minor cosmetic differences. I do know that all of his friends hate me and all of my friends hate him. We drive each other crazy in ways that nobody else can even touch. We never bore each other. And we both realize what a rare thing this is."
— Augusten Burroughs (Dry: A Memoir)

"In the opening to the Mary Tyler Moore Show Mary's in the supermarket, hurrying through the aisles. She pauses at the meat case, picks up a steak and checks the price. Then rolls her eyes, shrugs and tosses it in the cart. That's kind of how I feel. Sure I would have liked things to be different. But, 'roll of eyes' what can you do? 'shrug' I threw the meat in my cart and moved on."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"I believe in the baby Jesus, and I believe he is handsome and lives in the sky with his pet cow. I believe that it is essential the cow like you, and if you pet the cow with your mind, it will lick your hand and give you cash. But if you make the cow angry, it will turn away from you, forget you exist, and your life will fall into shambles. I believe that as long as the cow likes you, you can get what you want. In order to keep the cow’s favor, you need to ‘let go and let God,’ meaning you can’t obsess about controlling every little thing. You have to let things unfold naturally, and not try to change things you cannot change. On the other hand, I believe that if you’ve made the cow happy by living this way, you’re allowed to ask for favors..."
— Augusten Burroughs (Magical Thinking)

"Just as I had long suspected, a person didn't really need math for anything anyway. Maybe some people did. Some limited people."
— Augusten Burroughs (Possible Side Effects)

"It turns out that (he) has a condition known as micropenis. This means his penis is less than three inches long, fully erect. It looks like a large clitoris, sticking out above two balls.
"Suck my big, fat cock, " he tells me. "You like that big dick?"
I am dizzy. I am literally dizzy. I was so shocked to encounter the micropenis and now am even more shocked to encounter the apparent lack of knowledge about the micropenis. I grip it in my hand, and it's lost, so I use my thumb and index finger to jerk it.
"Yeah, " he says. "Yeah, man, stroke that long, hard cock. Work it."
I am now engaged in what I consider volunteer work. I am jerking him off purely out of pity. This is really no different from donating five percent of my paycheck to United Way every month, and it occurs to me that maybe now I don't need to give to the United Way and instead can keep the cash for myself for dating, which I am obviously going to have to do quite a bit more of."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"I just look at her and she creeps me out. She looks like she would eat a baby. Not that she's fat. She just looks hungry in some dangerous way that can't be explained. She's always so nice and friendly. Exactly the disposition of a baby killer."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"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

"Sometimes when you work in advertising you'll get a product that's really garbage and you have to make it seem fantastic, something that is essential to the continued quality of life."
— Augusten Burroughs (Dry: A Memoir)

"When you have your health, you have everything. When you do not have your health, nothing else matters at all."
— Augusten Burroughs (Dry)

"I couldn't help but think, This car is taking me to a mental hospital and my mother is treating it like open-mic night at a Greenwich Village café."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"You deserve to need me, not to have me."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"Like every child, I adored her. Until I formed a brain and got to know her."
— Augusten Burroughs (Possible Side Effects)

"My mother is from Cairo, Georgia. This makes everything she says sound like it went through a curling iron. "
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"In addition to calling each other standard names like bitch and whore, the Finches incoporated Freud's stages of psychosexual development into their arsenal of invectives.

"You're so oral. You'll never make it to genital! The most you can ever hope for is to reach anal, you immature, frigid old maid," Natalie yelled.

"Stop antagonizing me," Hope shouted. "Just stop transfering all this anger onto me."

"Your avoidance tactics are not giong to work, Miss Hope," Natalie warned. "I'm not going to let you just slink away from me. You hate me and you have to confront me."

"
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"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 (Dry: A Memoir)

"If we happened to be in rehearsal downstairs in my room and a neighbor padded across the lawn to rap gently on the window and ask us to please be more quiet, Natalie might simply lift up her skirt and mash her vagina against the window while extending her middle finger."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"I think part of the reason I'm attracted to Foster is because he's such a mess. I mean, the people I have loved in my life have never been easy to love. I'm not used to normal. I'm used to disaster. I don't know, as messed up as he is, he's also sort of exciting, sort of a challenge. I'm accustomed to working for love."
— Augusten Burroughs (Dry: A Memoir)

""I really look at my childhood as being one giant rusty tuna can that I continue to recycle in many different shapes." "
— Augusten Burroughs

"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

"I think I love him, but I also think that you can love people who aren't good for you."
— Augusten Burroughs (Dry: A Memoir)

"Part of me believes that love is more valuable when you have to work for it."
— Augusten Burroughs (Dry: A Memoir)

"...handsome people are always interesting to watch. But a handsome person in crisis is riveting."
— Augusten Burroughs (Dry: A Memoir)

"“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

"...I don't think it's any more deceptive than wearing four-inch come-fuck-me pumps when one has no intention of ever fucking anybody."
— Augusten Burroughs (Possible Side Effects)

"Maybe it was a Patty Hearst thing. Stockholm syndrome or whatever it's called when you're being held against your will but then you become sucked in and fall in love. Or if not exactly love, you fall into something you can't see out of. 'I can't shoot a machine gun' becomes 'Hey, this hardly has any kick-back!'"
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"Everybody in recovery smokes. If you don't like smoking, don't even bother trying to get sober. Just stay drunk."
— Augusten Burroughs (Possible Side Effects)

"Throwing things horrified me. I suffered extreme, paralyzing anxiety when it came to anything remotely athletic. I wouldn't even run to catch the school bus because I knew I'd trip and then get teased for a year."
— Augusten Burroughs (Possible Side Effects)

"He's a really nice guy, if only I weren't me."
— Augusten Burroughs (Dry: A Memoir)

"It was a great story and I admired her. And I also felt a little envious. Because that bloody tampon had been a secret weapon. And every woman had one. But only a woman like Debby would be brave enough to use it."
— Augusten Burroughs (Possible Side Effects)

"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 (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"God, I felt certain, did not mind that I didn’t press my hands together to pray. I was casual, but I was sincere. I knew that God existed as the Correct Answer inside my chest."
— Augusten Burroughs (A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir)

"I did not consider him to be any kind of a genius. I considered him deeply lacking in the area that mattered most in life. Star quality."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"The most I would do was use the shadow tool in Photoshop to bring out the muscular rips in my stomach, which were honestly there. Beneath the fat."
— Augusten Burroughs (Possible Side Effects)

"He continues to smile expectantly. I take a step back. I don't want to catch whatever he has. He is a disturbing out-of-uniform Santa.""
— Augusten Burroughs

""Turn off the light," she says as she walks away, creating a small woosh that smells sweet and chemical. It makes me sad because it's the smell she makes when she's leaving."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"Life would be fabric-softener, tuna-salad-on-white, PTA-meeting normal."
— Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors: A Memoir)

"I gazed around the room and my eyes stopped dead on a little boy standing in the corner. This was a particularly eerie doll. Life-sized and blond-haired and blue-eyed. I saw a little Nazi boy, pockets probably stuffed with scissors and retractable blades. My grandfather on my mother's side was rumored to be half Jewish, which practically makes me Jerry Seinfeld's brother, and thus wary of blond German boys with their hands out of sight."
— Augusten Burroughs (Possible Side Effects)