Augusten Burroughs
I think people tend to see the bigger point, which is maybe not fitting in and feeling like you didn't have the childhood that you expected you would have, or that you felt lonely or struggled with drugs and alcohol or just that you were able to achieve your dreams.Collection: Dreams
Marriage is overdone. As long as there are people, people are going to find it interesting.Collection: Marriage
When people meet me, many times they're very surprised because they expect someone who is kind of wacky with seven piercings and very hip and cool and New York City, and I'm not.Collection: Cool
I'm always prepared for the worst. I was prepared to have the book come out, sell seven copies, and have to keep working in advertising, so it was just great that it was received so well and by such a huge audience.
With my own memoirs, they are truthful, and I write everything fully expecting to some day end up televised on Court TV, and I'm fully prepared to be challenged legally on it.
There's never a false note in a Berg novel.
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.
Reading takes solitude and it takes focus.
Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.
My parents had this relationship that was really terrifying. I mean, the level of hatred that they had, and the level of physical abuse - my mother would beat up my father, basically - and I think I was drawn to images on television that were bright and reflective.
My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day.
I've just finished my next collection, Possible Side Effects, and I'm now working on a collection of holiday stories as well as a memoir about my relationship with my father.
I'm like the guy who prepares your taxes or a dentist. I'm very conservative and boring in a lot of ways.
I was on the cover of a lot of newspapers. I was on the cover of USA Today for every single day for a month. I was on the masthead, so I tend to get recognized a lot, and in weird places. It's always flattering, and it's always odd. It's always at the worst possible time.
I was in advertising for years. That was cushy, you know? It's pretty cushy in a lot of ways, but I hated it.
I think writers tend to be experience junkies, and I think they also tend to want to be on the outside looking in.
I really look at my childhood as being one giant rusty tuna can that I continue to recycle in many different shapes.
I never listen to music when I write.
I love to both give and receive very old books.
I like, though, that people have a hunger to connect with other people. They're desperate to know that you're not lying to them or misleading them.
I knew that if I wrote a new book every six months or every year, if I continued to read great books, eventually I would write something worthy of publication. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confident that it would happen.
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.
But my favorite band is Curbside Life, out of Chicago.
But I can also write in crappy motel rooms, while standing in line, or sitting in the dentist's chair.
Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.
Because I've lived in one room my entire life, working at the same table that you use to pay bills at and eat at. It's going to be nice to have actual space.
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.
As a child, I was never drawn toward depraved or extreme situations; I really wanted a normal little childhood. Unfortunately, that's just not what happened.
And I tend to listen to NPR when I'm not writing.
I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.Collection: Inspirational
You would be amazed by what you can give up, lose, or break, and yet still be a person who gets happy over brownies.Collection: Happiness
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.Collection: Ambition
No matter how huge your loss, as long as you remain engaged with your life, the best days of your life may still be ahead of you. Don't misunderstand me: the pain of your loss will remain with you for the rest of your life. But great joy will be there right beside it. Deep sorrow and deep joy can exist within you, side by side. At every moment. And it's not confusing. And it's not a conflict.Collection: Pain
After was better. Before was only there so After could happen.Collection: Happens
I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn't deserve it.Collection: Knows
You are allowed to be alive. You are allowed to be somebody different. You are allowed to not say goodbye to anybody or explain a single thing to anyone, ever.Collection: Goodbye
Maybe you feel pressure to be positive because so many people rely on your good, fake-positive energy? If that's the case, screw everybody else. You're not a bottle of Valium.Collection: People
The past does not haunt us. We haunt the past. We allow our minds to focus in that direction. We open memories and examine them. We reexperience emotions we felt during the painful events we experienced because we are recalling them in as much detail as we can.Collection: Memories
This is what you should know about losing someone you love. They do not travel alone. You go with them.Collection: Losing Someone
Imperfections are attractive when their owners are happy with them.Collection: Imperfection
But feelings, no matter how strong or “ugly,” are not a part of who you are. They are the radio stations your mind listens to if you don’t give it something better to do. Feelings are fluid and dynamic; they change frequently. Feelings are something you HAVE, not something you ARE. Like physical beauty, a cold sore, or an opinion. Admitting you feel rage or terrible pain or regret or some old, rotten blame does not mean these feelings are part of who you are as a person. What these feelings mean is, you have to change your thinking to be free of them.Collection: Strong
It was unnerving, the way she could go from cool efficiency to sarcastic to sweet within the space of thirty seconds. I found it very manipulative and controlling. It put the other person constantly on-guard. And it was extremely intimidating because you never knew when she was going to snap. I made a mental note to refine these skills within myself.Collection: Sarcastic
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.Collection: Zoos
Love is a helium-based emotion; Love always takes the high road.Collection: Love Is
There is no shame in being hungry for another person. There is no shame in wanting very much to share your life with somebody.Collection: Shame
It turned out I had always been a smoker. I just hadn't had any cigarettes.Collection: Cigarette
Confidence is a reduction of your own interest in whether others are thinking about you and if so, what they're thinking.Collection: Thinking About You
Stars should not be seen alone. That's why there are so many. Two people should stand together and look at them. One person alone will surely miss the good ones.Collection: Stars
I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.Collection: Years
Long marriages have ended in ruin over tiny and insignificant grievances that were never properly aired and instead grew into a brittle barnacle of hatred.Collection: Long