I'm very conservative and boring in a lot of ways.' '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.' 'Marriage is overdone. 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.' 'I'm like the guy who prepares your taxes or a dentist. It's always at the worst possible time.' 'I'm always prepared for the worst. It's always flattering, and it's always odd.

I was on the masthead, so I tend to get recognized a lot, and in weird places. I was on the cover of USA Today for every single day for a month. That was cushy, you know? It's pretty cushy in a lot of ways, but I hated it.' 'I was on the cover of a lot of newspapers. They're desperate to know that you're not lying to them or misleading them.' 'I love to both give and receive very old books.' 'I never listen to music when I write.' 'I really look at my childhood as being one giant rusty tuna can that I continue to recycle in many different shapes.' '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.' 'I think writers tend to be experience junkies, and I think they also tend to want to be on the outside looking in.' 'I was in advertising for years. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confident that it would happen.' 'I like, though, that people have a hunger to connect with other people. I've always felt like a tourist because I have never fit in anywhere.' '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. It's going to be nice to have actual space.' 'Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.' 'But I can also write in crappy motel rooms, while standing in line, or sitting in the dentist's chair.' '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. You absolutely must plow forward.' '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. Unfortunately, that's just not what happened.' '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. 'And I tend to listen to NPR when I'm not writing.' 'As a child, I was never drawn toward depraved or extreme situations I really wanted a normal little childhood.

This is how by augusten burroughs