“All of a sudden, I feel like an emotional paraplegic. I feel that all of my gains and insights are based on control and denial. I'm worried that I'm so profoundly sick as to appear healthy and together.”

Dry, Augusten Burroughs

“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.”

Dry, Augusten Burroughs

“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.”

Dry, Augusten Burroughs

“Why am I so anxious? And then it hits me. I'm not anxious, I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be so lonely because it seems catastrophic - seeing the car just as it hits you.”

Dry, Augusten Burroughs

“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.”

Possible Side Effects, Augusten Burroughs

“All the way home in the car, I stared at my mother's new face. Every few miles she would comment, 'What a lovely tree,' or 'That is a beautiful lawn.' To the untrained eye, my mother might have appeared to be normal. But I knew better. I could see the wildness behind her eyes, crouching, hiding. I could see the tiny hint of smile at the corners of her mouth that said, I'll fool you all.”

Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs

“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.”

Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs

“How come I'm not getting ready for college? I'm fourteen and should be sitting at the kitchen table with my father, saying, 'But Dad, Princeton has the better football team. I don't care that Grandpa went to Harvard. Can't I just do it my way? Like Sinatra?' Instead, I'm laying on a used twin bed with somebody else's pee stains. I'm in my mother's psychiatrists house for god sakes, eating candy canes for breakfast.”

Running With Scissors, 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.”

Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs