Augusten Burroughs Quotes

When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting.

You have to experience life, make observations, and ask questions.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

All the things worth writing about are outside me. I'm a lens, not a source. And even if it's not always a comfortable journey, it's always a stimulating one.

You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.

Every day I walk out into the world / to be dazzled, then to be reflective.

Taking time to sit back and watch and think about what you've seen is important. Traveling did a great deal to me. I found that when I travel and just sit in the corner and watch, a million ideas come to me.

I think in many ways, I'm sort of a blank canvas, because in many ways, I'm just observing the world and the people around me and their characters and letting them kind of explode off me and to find out why they're doing what they're doing. But then every once in awhile, I get to take on a whole new character.

He that travels much knows much.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

I was a little truth seeker as a child. I wanted more than anything to understand myself and also other people.

We must get beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths... and tell the world the glories of our journey.

The most important thing is to live an interesting life. Keep your eyes, ears and heart open. Talk to people and visit interesting places, and don't forget to ask questions. To be a writer you need to drink in the world around you so it's always there in your head.

It's the way to educate your eyes. Stare. Pry, listen eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.

Curiosity is the best motive for writing: curiosity about the world at large, or about oneself.

Writing is how I find out what I believe and what I care most deeply about. It's how I sort through the mess of daily experience and try to make sense of it - by stepping out of it for a while. Writing is how I train a searchlight into the darker corners of my self and the world, as I'm sure I'd never do otherwise.

It's astonishing what you learn and feel and see along the way. That's why a reporter's job, as you know, is such a joy.

I just go out and try to make sense of the world around me.

Use your imagination, and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.

I was never a good student. I had to be dragged into kindergarten. It was hard to sit and listen to somebody talk. I wanted to be out, educated by experience and adventure, and I didn't know how to express that.

Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.

Read a lot, live your life, and listen and watch, so that your mind fills up with millions of images.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.