Running With Scissors

"As I spent more and more time with the Finches during that year, I could feel myself changing in profound ways, with stunning speed. I was like a packet of powdered Sea Monkeys and they were like water." (p.68)

" To me, these people were as exotic as animals in a zoo. I'd never seen anything like them. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be one of them or simply live among them taking notes and photographs." (p.82)

"The difference, one difference between us, is that this is her home, her family, whereas I am only borrowing them. I don't know which of us is at an advantage." (p.142)

"And even though I spent many hours each day hunched over a notebook writing in my journal because I felt that if I didn't write at least four hours a day I might as well not exist, the idea of being a writer never entered my mind. My mother was a writer but she was also crazy." (p.154)

"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 seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall." (p.247)

Augusten Burroughs, Running With Scissors