Augusten Burroughs Quotes

I find I have to be the sad clown: laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.

In my life why do I smile at people I'd rather kick in the eye?

I'm putting up a great front, then because I feel like I'm breaking apart inside.

Elizabeth had never been more at a loss to make her feelings appear what they were not. It was necessary to laugh, when she would rather have cried.

Fake confidence on the outside often trumps truthful turmoil on the inside.

I want to go home at night and feel discomfort.

I am interested in the gap between what people say and what they think - the undiscovered world of people's lives. Lives of quiet desperation.

Sometimes I feel like a human pin cushion. Every painful emotion hits me with ridiculously exaggerated force. And the anxiety feels like hands inside of me, squeezing my guts really hard.

My soul is dark with stormy riot: directly traced over to diet.

I've still gotta come across as happy when inside I feel crap!

People have so much pain inside them that they're not even aware of.

A brave heart? It feels like a swollen and aching thing in my chest.

Melancholy is the nurse of frenzy.

…I hate myself for not being able to go downstairs naturally and seek comfort in numbers. I hate myself for having to sit here and be torn between I know not what within me.

I am truly miserable - more so than I like to acknowledge to myself. Pride refuses to aid me. It has brought me into the scrape, and will not help me out of it.

How sick i am! that thought Always comes to me with horror. Is it this strange for everybody? But such fugitive feelings have always been my metier.

Many shed tears merely for show, and have dry eyes when no one's around to observe them.

And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.

I can see his pain, see it in the way he runs his fingers through his hair, over and over, and I understand what it costs him to hide it all.

She carried a knife inside of herself now, one that was always cutting her. She could feel it every time she swallowed, every time her thoughts strayed from the splendor of the wild.

You cannot escape what you have to deal with inside yourself. It will never bring good things. It will only bring madness.

It rasped her, though, to have stirring about in her this brutal monster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted down in the depths of that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or quite secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred.

I feel too much. It's like being drummed to death from within. You know?

Oh, how with more than dreams the soul is torn, ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

He was outwardly calm but inwardly bleeding to death.