A Wolf at the Table (2008) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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People edit see section history

• Augusten Burroughs: Add a description of this character.
• Brutus
• Ernie
• Grover
• Greg
• John
• Damian
• Martha
• Margaret
• Carolyn

Quotes edit see section history

• “In a way, if I wasn't having a happy childhood right now, I could have one later. I knew I had an ugly life. I knew I was lonely and I was scared. I thought something might be wrong with my father, wrong in the worst possible way. I believed he might contain a pathology of the mind -an emptiness- a knocking hollow where his soul should have been. But I also knew that one day, I would grow up. One day, I would be twenty, or thirty, or forty, even fifty and sixty and seventy and eighty and maybe even one hundred years old. And all those years were mine, they belonged to nobody but me. So even if I was unhappy now, it could all change tomorrow. Maybe I didn't even need to jump off the cliff to experience that kind of freedom. Maybe the fact that I knew such a freedom existed in the world meant that I could someday find it.”

• “All he was guilty of was not wanting me.”

  Narrator

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• Maybe, what you get from a father you can get somewhere else, from somebody else, later. Or maybe you can just work around what’s missing, build the house of your life over the hole that is there and always will be.

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• People believe in God because they can’t face being alone. It didn’t scare me to think of being alone in the world. It scared me that I wasn’t.

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• Where there is nothing, absolutely anything is possible. And this thrilled me. It gave me hope.

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• Didn’t every new thing you did become a part of you, one of your bricks?

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• Riding back from the grocery store, I realized my father was two men—one he presented to the outside world, and one, far darker, that was always there, behind the face everybody else saw.

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• Aut disce aut discede, and Non semper erit aestas. Either learn or leave, and It won’t always be summer.

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• Everybody was behaving as though nothing was shockingly wrong and it was making me crazy.

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• Nothing made sense to me anymore. I knew I was young, I knew I was small. But I was worried that I might already be ruined.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Amherst
• Georgia
• Mexico
• Massachusetts
• Northampton

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Augusten Burroughs (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.6

Notes for Parents edit see section history

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Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Biographies & Memoirs › Arts & Literature › Authors
• Books › Parenting & Families › Family Relationships
• Books › Biographies & Memoirs › Memoirs

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