Augusten Burroughs Quotes

You know when people leave a job, and they say they didn't know what they came away with after two years? That's how I felt when I first left Google.

There might come a point where I don't want to be in this industry at all.

I think I made the wrong career choice

That is sort of the eternal question for people who go to Hollywood...what will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and forces you to think about doing something else? When do you throw in the towel?

After doing kid's television on CBBC and messing around with eight and nine year olds, there was a period of three years in the middle of that when I wasn't doing anything. I was working as a receptionist and in a pub; I was a cleaner and all sorts of things. All life has its ups and downs.

Coming from losing my dream of playing professional football, not having a college degree at the time and looking to jump into the business world at a young age was pretty daunting for me.

I came to The United States to see what would happen in 2000 after working for 20 years in Australia and asked my agent to look out for the nasty roles because I'd become famous for playing the nicest man in Australia. So I wanted to play bad guys. But I've been doing that now for 13 years so when I was offered the chance to do some comedy, I grabbed it.

As an actor, you can show up on a set and be on a TV show for three or four years, or whatever it is and, by the end of it, you just want to do something else.

I'm almost 40, so it's an awkward time in my career. You kind of hope it comes through and, if not, I'll be a waiter. Awesome.

[Making music] only turned into this weird job in the last year or so. Once I figured that out, I was having a blast.

When my pop career was over, I was scratching my head, thinking, "God, how am I going to do something after I'm forty?" I was in my mid-thirties, thinking I was on the scrap heap.

Put simply, what I'd like to do is to see the first two years of community college free for everybody's who is willing to work for it.

Over the years I have learned that creating art has made me happy. I used to be a lawyer and I'm much happier being an artist.

In my time at St. Mary's College, drifting out of sports because it was something that began to feel really finite. And I could see that I didn't have the passion to sustain a career in sports.

It was tough getting fired by the NBA. I really didn't know where I was going, until [ESPN] called me. I said, "Hey, 'ESPN?' Never heard of it. It sounds like a disease." Now I have that same disease as a sports fanatic. All this sports madness we didn't have years ago, now I'm very blessed and fortunate to be part of it.

I just started to do my own thing for about a year and a half, and I worked in the evening selling phonograph records. Then I said to myself, "I'm afraid I have to go to New York after all."

I am a man who used to wear the tights. We traveled the country doing two Shakespeare plays for bored college students for about a year. I think I'd probably still be doing it now if I hadn't just randomly decided to go to a sketch group audition. That led to doing improv, which led to the Daily Show. But it was fun while it lasted.

I bet I'm the only person in history who went from being the star of a sitcom to the host of a public-access show in less than a year.

I was undervalued so I stopped stripping. I was 18 years old and I worked three jobs. This was just one of them, and I really enjoyed performing. It was probably my first performing job ever. I really like to dance, obviously, but then I didn't really love taking the clothes off at the end.

In fact, in the last job I had before coming to the White House - I remember this clearly - I was on maternity leave with Sasha, still trying to figure out what to do with my life, and I got a call for an interview for this position, a senior position at the hospitals. And I thought, okay, here we go. So I had to scramble to look for babysitting, and couldn't find one.

I'd been out in Los Angeles for about eight years, knocking around. I actually, instead of waiting tables, worked in offices as a temporary assistant.

From my point of view, it is better to take the chance, having had nine jobs in 10 years, to recharge my batteries

If I have things my way, over the next few years, I'm going to be doing a lot more directing and a lot less acting. That will be fun for a while.

I felt my personal life was not what it should be. It had nothing to do with Mr. Show - I'm monstrously appreciative and understand what it did for me and to me - but after four years, I just felt like I needed to do something else. I guess I wanted to be in a different place, physically.

I love everybody I work with. It's really like a family. I can't imagine leaving. It's weird. I know at some point I'll have to leave, but I don't really have any plan for that yet. Anytime you're leaving, it's going to be a crapshoot. You hope you have something to do afterward, but there's no guarantee.