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"And I tend to listen to NPR when I'm not writing."
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"Twofold misjudgement. - The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal."

"You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you've observed in the world."

"As often I have been a science fiction writer writing science fiction for the community of science fiction readers, I am also, for good or ill, an American writing American literature to an American audience. Most fundamentally, though, I am a human being writing human literature to a human audience."

"Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists."

"Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them."

"I'd be somewhat of a lousy writer if I didn't know what to say."

"A true piece of writing sets you free."
Explore more quotes by Augusten Burroughs

"I can't tell you how much I love Target and Costco, that kind of culture, because it's something I never felt a part of. I've always felt like a tourist because I have never fit in anywhere."

"I like, though, that people have a hunger to connect with other people. They're desperate to know that you're not lying to them or misleading them."

"I was on the cover of a lot of newspapers. I was on the cover of USA Today for every single day for a month. I was on the masthead, so I tend to get recognized a lot, and in weird places. It's always flattering, and it's always odd. It's always at the worst possible time."

"Because I've lived in one room my entire life, working at the same table that you use to pay bills at and eat at. It's going to be nice to have actual space."

"I knew that if I wrote a new book every six months or every year, if I continued to read great books, eventually I would write something worthy of publication. I understood I might be in my forties or my fifties or even my sixties, but I felt confident that it would happen."

"With my own memoirs, they are truthful, and I write everything fully expecting to some day end up televised on Court TV, and I'm fully prepared to be challenged legally on it."

"I'm like the guy who prepares your taxes or a dentist. I'm very conservative and boring in a lot of ways."

"I really look at my childhood as being one giant rusty tuna can that I continue to recycle in many different shapes."
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