Justice & Law Quote by Augusten Burroughs

Augusten Burroughs turns confession into a dare: the memoirist as both witness and defendant, writing with one eye on the page and the other on the docket. The line is funny because it’s brazenly bureaucratic about something we’re trained to treat as intimate. He doesn’t just claim honesty; he frames honesty as litigation strategy. Truth, here, isn’t a halo. It’s evidence.

The intent is partly prophylactic. Memoir lives in the mushy space between memory and documentation, and Burroughs has famously had that boundary tested in public (lawsuits, family blowback, the cultural brawl over whether memoir is art or affidavit). By invoking Court TV, he names the modern arena where private pain becomes content and where narrative gets cross-examined by strangers. It’s a sly acknowledgment that the memoir market rewards extremity, while the legal system punishes inaccuracies that can be proven.

The subtext is a tightrope walk: “I’m truthful” doubles as “I know you won’t believe me.” He’s preempting the inevitable accusations of embellishment by leaning into the spectacle of being challenged. That posture turns potential critics into a jury he’s already prepared to face, suggesting confidence, paranoia, and a certain performative appetite for conflict.

Contextually, it lands as a commentary on our era’s hunger for “real stories” and our simultaneous distrust of them. Burroughs isn’t just selling a life; he’s selling the risk attached to telling it plainly, staking credibility not on moral purity but on willingness to be subpoenaed.