Running with Scissors

"The most amazing book...hilarious, freaky-deaky, berserk, controlled, transcendent, touching, affectionate, vengeful, all-embracing. It makes you happy that there's such a thing in the world as a string of written words...a golden effervescence of invention and wit that stuns you with its audacity and beauty and powerful love of being alive. Running with Scissors, as a memoir in the current conventional sense, makes a good run at blowing every other contender out of the water." --The Washington Post

"Bawdy, outrageous, often hilarious...the anecdotes in Running with Scissors can be so flippant, and so insanely funny (quite literally), that the effect is that of a William Burroughs situation comedy." --The New York Times

"Running With Scissors is testament to the resilience of the human spirit. That he can stand aside as an impartial observer of it, even write with humor in spite of the tragedy around him, is astounding proof of our emotional survival skills...reads like David Sedaris writing "The Hotel New Hampshire." --The Boston Globe

'Twisted, freakish, unfathomably bizarre...Not only is it one of the funniest "coming of age" memoirs written, it's also the best of the genre since Paul Monette's "Becoming a Man."... It's literally breathtaking, and you may find yourself putting the book down occasionally to catch some air. But when you come back for more, Burroughs' brilliant writing and humor in the face of darkness catch you off guard...It will prove to be a lasting treasure, a gorgeously written true-life story destined to be cherished and quoted long after its last page is read. Best of all, by the book's end, it bravely stands as a life-affirming survival guide for all the misfits of the world." --The Tampa Tribune

"Running with Scissors is a cut above...screamingly funny...Two things make Burroughs' book so compelling: his wit and his depiction of the wild goings-on in this large, strange family...But the true source of Running with Scissors' appeal stems from Burroughs' ability to bring the 1970's alive...In the end, the book celebrates Burroughs' resilient, upbeat spirit, which helps him surmount one of the weirder childhoods on record." --USA TODAY

"Augusten Burroughs' memoir, Running With Scissors, is a surreal and entertaining trip through a young life most readers will thank God wasn't theirs...Burroughs never lets his readers forget that stuck in the middle of all the madness is a confused boy." --Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Shocking, sarcastic, humorous but never dull, the memoir has an effect similar to watching a car accident. You know you shouldn't gawk, but you simply can't turn away from the carnage." --Boston Herald

"He survived parental trauma, his mom's psychiatrist's house of horrors and, to bring the book into the here and now, an acquaintance with a pedophile...But Augusten Burroughs's memoir still makes you laugh, because it's as funny as it is twisted." --G.Q.

AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS is the author of Sellevision. He lives in New York City.