Politics & Power Quote by Augusten Burroughs

Augusten Burroughs sells chaos for a living, so the funniest move he can make is to claim he runs like an accountant. The line is a deliberate act of expectation-jamming: readers come to him for dysfunctional family lore, addiction, and the kind of memoir candor that feels radioactive. He answers with the most unglamorous self-description possible: the guy who prepares your taxes or a dentist. Not a rebel, not an artist-prince, just someone you tolerate because they are competent and necessary.

The intent is partly defensive, partly corrective. Memoirists get flattened into their material; their wildest chapters become their whole personality. Burroughs pushes back by emphasizing routine, restraint, even a kind of buttoned-up ethic. The comparison is also slyly transactional. Taxes and dentistry are intimate, invasive services where you surrender control and hope the professional is steady. He is implying: I can write about mess, but my job is craft and maintenance. I show up. I do the work.

“Conservative and boring” reads less like ideology than temperament. It’s a refusal of the cultural script that equates artistic authenticity with perpetual messiness. Subtext: the chaos is on the page because it’s been processed, edited, shaped. The wildness is a product, not a lifestyle.

Context matters: Burroughs emerged alongside a late-90s/early-2000s memoir boom that rewarded extremity and spectacle. This quote punctures that economy with a dry, self-aware joke, reclaiming authorship from the persona the market wants to buy.