Author Birthday – 23 October – Augusten Burroughs

Happy Birthday, Augusten Burroughs, born on 23 October 1965.

Augusten Burroughs Quotes

1. I, myself, am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. (Magical Thinking: True Stories)
2. I’ve experienced backlash, for sure. But I always come back to the writing, to telling my story and not allowing anything to pollute me. (Goodreads)
3. Think of your head as an unsafe neighborhood; don’t go there alone. (Dry)
4. The truth is that nobody is owed an apology for anything. Apologies are lovely when they happen. But they change nothing. They do not reverse actions or correct damage. They are merely nice to hear. (This Is How)
5. 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. (This Is How)
6. I write throughout the day. Sometimes on memoir, sometimes on fiction. I write in many different locations—upstairs in the attic room, downstairs on the sofa or at one of the tables, or upstairs in the bedroom on top of the bed. I might write 10,000 words in a day or I might write literally one sentence. But if I don’t write at least a tiny bit every day, I get totally derailed. It’s like my machinery rusts instantly. (Goodreads)
7. I remember when I was a little kid, after it snowed I would go around the yard and find the best clumps of ice, and save them in a little pile, icicles from the roof or deck or whatever. Memoir is a way for me to do that with experiences. It’s a way for me to put it away, and keep it, but also let it go. (Vogue)
8. My feeling is, if you’re going to be a memoirist, you owe it to the reader not to spit-shine your life. So if I’m uncomfortable writing about something because it might make me appear weak or crazy or desperate or unbalanced or…whatever, I just have to deal with that discomfort and write anyway. (Goodreads)
9. I experience more internal pressure with respect to fiction writing than I do with memoir. And I think maybe it’s because in fiction there is so much freedom; there is only freedom. (Goodreads)
10. I’ve been writing about my life since I was eight or nine, long before I had a career as a writer or had any dreams of being a writer. Writing is really how I process my thoughts and feelings and experiences. And this has remained true for most of my life. (Goodreads)

Augusten Burroughs is an American memoirist, novelist, and writer best known for his New York Times bestselling memoir Running with Scissors. It was made into a 2006 film. In addition to Scissors, Burroughs penned a second memoir, Dry, about his experience during and after treatment for alcoholism. It was followed by two collections of memoir essays, Magical Thinking and Possible Side Effects. Universal Studios bought the rights to A Wolf at the Table in 2008. In 2012, Burroughs released This Is How, a book of advice and memoirs. His first novel, Sellevision, was published in 2000 and his second, The Debris Field, will be published in 2027. Burroughs’ writing focuses on subjects such as advertising, psychiatrists, religious families, and home shopping networks. Burroughs was presented with a special Trustee Award at the Lambda Literary Awards in 2013. Follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

Source for photograph: Author’s Facebook Page

by Amanda Patterson
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