"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."
- Augusten Burroughs
"I liked his attention. But I also felt like there was something sick and wrong about it. Like it might make me sick later. I thought of my grandmother, my father's mother. How when I used to visit her..."
"Smoking had become my favorite thing in the world to do. It was like having instant comfort, no matter where or when."
"And human instinct is ancient and reliable, utterly mysterious and possibly capable of great genius. I believe that refined, fluent instincts are a person's most valuable asset. My own instincts have ..."
"I could not imagine the kind of person that would, upon seeing a crazy talcum-powder-covered Southern lady think to herself, Hmmmm, she might make a great new friend. The line between normal and crazy..."
"Why am I so anxious? And then it hits me. I'm not anxious, I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs..."
"I sit there and think how it isn't fair that I can't drink at all, even a little. I realize I have crammed an entire lifetime of moderate drinking into a decade of hard-core drinking and that is why. ..."
"And in my mind, this settles the issue. I would never drink cologne, and am therefore not an alcoholic."
"My goal was to get through the day as fast as possible. I worked fast because I wanted to be done. I wanted to be done because I wanted to go home to my nest and drink."