
Lust & Wonder: A Memoir

It’s so hard to really trust what’s inside another person, to really believe someone’s intentions and what he or she says. I wished I could just trust him completely, without my own constant doubts regarding his constant doubts.
Augusten Burroughs • Lust & Wonder: A Memoir
If I was going to be completely sober for the rest of my life, if I couldn’t even have one drink at the end of a long and brittle day, then the life I lived needed to be a life from which I did not seek escape.
Augusten Burroughs • Lust & Wonder: A Memoir
How many of the things I fear or dread are actually things that I want?
Augusten Burroughs • Lust & Wonder: A Memoir
Dennis shut down when there was a conflict, and I was the opposite: I had to talk about it. It was unbearable not to. His silence then became this thing I had to break apart with my words. I hated the sound of my own voice when I was like this.
Augusten Burroughs • Lust & Wonder: A Memoir
The horrible thing about being sober is you lose your excuse for being so fucked up.
Augusten Burroughs • Lust & Wonder: A Memoir
And didn’t this mean, wasn’t it possible, I might have another chance? To find somebody I wouldn’t have to change for, somebody who wasn’t bothered so much by the many troublesome things about me or maybe even liked them?
Augusten Burroughs • Lust & Wonder: A Memoir
“A novel by Augusten Burroughs.” It said so, right there below the title. It was thrilling for maybe forty-seven seconds, and then the thrill drained right away. As I walked out of the store with my phone now in my pocket, I thought, It doesn’t matter what it is. We get used to it. Which is both good and bad.
Augusten Burroughs • Lust & Wonder: A Memoir
We can continue to live exactly as we do right now, in a heavy-lidded state of love and unspeakable compromise. Isn’t that what people do? Every day? Don’t they ache but rename it tired?
Augusten Burroughs • Lust & Wonder: A Memoir
know now: what is is all that matters. Not the thing you know is meant to be, not what could be, not what should be, not what ought to be, not what once was. Only the is.