Augusten Burroughs Quotes

I'd always thought that if I could get sober and stay sober, I would be able to have a career making music. My drug and alcohol addiction was the one thing holding me back. I had finally gotten the tools to stay sober, and it was just a matter of writing the songs.

There are some things about myself I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I’m not such a wonderful human being.

I went into acting as psychotherapy, and it's still a work in progress.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

The book, you understand, was not written for publication. It was the portrayal of my emotions, the analysis of my own soul life during three months of my nineteenth year. I wrote then all the time, just as I do now, but, though the book is in diary form, it is not a diary.

Everything I've written has been personal and touched on things that I needed to deal with in my personal life. So I just feel that writing is great therapy, and the best writing comes from truth, and so I mine my life constantly for that.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

I like to write when I feel I'm the real me.

I really don't feel that writing is therapy.

Writing is a way of processing our lives. And it can be a way of healing.

In the beginning, I was searching for myself in my music. My music was for me. I didn't have the mental room to be conscious of the listener; I wrote to save myself.

I write for myself things that I've gone through.

Writing gave me a life.

I stumbled onto the best profession to heal my childhood: the only one that lets you release and express whatever is ugly and messy and beautiful about your life. We're in the business of creating human beings. The more we spew, and the more honestly we do it, the better. Try that on Wall Street.

I wrote 'Road Less Traveled' to make myself feel better and process what I was going through.

Writing is very cathartic for me.

I was almost teaching myself through writing without even realizing it. It's like therapy. You can hear my progression as a person and how much happier I became, which is really cool for me to hear because I'm proud of myself.

I've always kept a journal and brought storytelling into my teaching.

Writing is very liberating and therapeutic.

I'm so proud of 'As She Pleases.' It's a really personal record, and I put so much of myself into it that; it feels like I am sharing part of my soul with the world by releasing it.

Working on this album has been very emotional and super personal, and creating this character 'Cry Baby' helped me deal with my own insecurities.

I've never been a confessional writer.

Recovery stabilized me; songwriting gave me a purpose.

Just going through a lot in my life, becoming more confident in myself, writing my own music and just really getting in the studio and just doing it.