It seems to me there's this tyranny that's not accidental or incidental, to make women feel compelled to look like somebody they're not. I think the effort is being made to get us to turn our time and attention to this instead of important political issues.

To have insurance and have a diagnosis and to have doctors, I just felt it would be immoral on some level to complain.

Anorexia was my attempt to have control over my body and manipulate my body and starve my body and shape my body. It was not a very good relationship. It was the sort of relationship my father had to my body. It was a tyrannical, "you'll do what I tell you" relationship.

One of the most radical things women can do is to love their body.

For me, so much of my life has been this attempt to find my way back into my body. I tried various forms, from promiscuity, to eating disorders, to performance art. And I think it wasn't until I got cancer, where I was suddenly being pricked and ported and chemoed and operated on, that I suddenly just became body. I was just a body. And it was in that, in that finally landing in myself that I really discovered the world in my body.

The minute someone tells you you have cancer, it's kind of like you die. You really do die. It's like you get that you're mortal.

I think all my work's been about how do women get back into our bodies; how do men get back. We're all disassociated.