The real struggle is about you: you, a person who has to learn to live in the real world, to inhabit her own skin, to know her own heart, to stop waiting for life to begin.

The dog’s agenda is simple, fathomable, overt: I want. “I want to go out, come in, eat something, lie here, play with that, kiss you. There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges if a request is denied.

Anorexia is a response to cultural images of the female body - waiflike, angular - that both capitulates to the ideal and also mocks it, strips away all the ancillary signs of sexuality, strips away breasts and hips and butt and leaves in their place a garish caricature, a cruel cartoon of flesh and bone.

It happened this way: I fell in love and then, because the love was ruining everything I cared about, I had to fall out.

When you quit drinking you stop waiting.

Before you get a dog, you can't quite imagine what living with one might be like; afterward, you can't imagine living any other way.

The hard things in life, the things you really learn from, happen with a clear mind.