The fact that you were essentially dead does not register until you begin to come alive. — Marya Hornbacher Alive Copy Share Image
My students know I have a life, they know I've written about my life. They know some detail, probably more than they… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
My bones are brittle, my heart weak and erratic, my esophagus and stomach riddled with ulcers, my reproductive system shot, my immune… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
The term “starvation diet” refers to 900 calories a day. I was on one-third of a starvation diet. What do you call… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
All of us have theories about the world and about ourselves. We will go to great lengths to prove ourselves right because… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
I grew into it. It grew into me. It and I blurred at the edges, became one amorphous, seeping, crawling thing. — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
It is, at the most basic level, a bundle of contradictions: a desire for power that strips you of all power. A… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
Madness strips you of memory and leaves you scrabbling around on the floor of your brain for the snatches and snippets of… — Marya Hornbacher Brain Copy Share Image
We were at another funeral party. I wasn’t sure who had died this time, but it was a suicide, and upsetting because… — Marya Hornbacher Funeral Copy Share Image
“Steps Six and Seven are often brushed off, especially by the nonbeliever, because they seem to assume a direct relationship with a… — Marya Hornbacher Religion Copy Share Image
“The last place I want to be is the hospital, but I'm not stupid. I know when it's time to go in.… — Marya Hornbacher Hospital Copy Share Image
When I was growing up, I always felt there was an expectation that I would do one of two things: be great… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
Hospitalizations in general are blurry. The days are the same, precisely the same. Nothing changes. Life melts down to a simple progression… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“Being here, living now, recognizing our smallness, is a spiritual practice. It allows us to be at peace with our humanity. It… — Marya Hornbacher Life Copy Share Image
We know we need, and so we acquire and eat and eat, past the point of bodily fullness, trying to sate a… — Marya Hornbacher Ashamed Copy Share Image
Recovery isn’t easy, at first. It takes time. It takes more work, sometimes, than you think you’re willing to do. But it… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
I have a type of bipolar that swings up and down all day long. There are significant mood swings within a day,… — Marya Hornbacher Bipolar Copy Share Image
Crazy isn´t always what they say it is. It´s not always the old woman wearing sneakers and a skirt and a scarf,… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
It is not a sudden leap from sick to well. It is a slow, strange meander from sick to mostly well. The… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“People who’ve Been to Hell and Back develop a certain sort of self-righteousness. There is a tendency to say: I have an… — Marya Hornbacher Mental-disorders Copy Share Image
“The bragging was the worst. I hear this in schools all over the country, in cafés and restaurants, in bars, on the… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“I do doubt she ever felt so cluttered and noisy and jangled that she put her boot through the ice. As soon… — Marya Hornbacher Addiction Copy Share Image
“Here's how you make absolutely sure that you'll keep getting crazier by the day: - Ignore everything your psychiatrist tells you. Disregard… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
I don't think people realize, when they're just getting started on an eating disorder or even when they're in the grip of… — Marya Hornbacher About yourself Copy Share Image
“Remember, anoretics do eat. We have systems of eating that develop almost unconsciously. By the time we realize we´ve been running our… — Marya Hornbacher Eating Copy Share Image
I wish I could find words to explain what this kind of cold is like- the cold that has somehow gotten in… — Marya Hornbacher Cold Copy Share Image
You can't teach an ear, you can't teach talent, but you can teach people who have those things not to just fly… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“I was used to sleeping with people because I endlessly found myself in identical situations where it was easier to just fuck… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
You will miss her sometimes. Bear in mind she's trying to kill you. Bear in mind you have a life to live. — Marya Hornbacher Anorexia Copy Share Image
“No matter how thin you get, no matter how short you cut your hair, it's still going to be you underneath.” — Marya Hornbacher Anorexia Copy Share Image
He leaned down and whispered to me: No matter how thin you get, no matter how short you cut your hair, it's… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
Never, never underestimate the power of desire. If you want to live badly enough, you can live. The great question, at least… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
I think many people with a chronic illness would prefer not to have their chronic illness, simply because it's high maintenance. — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
...Someone speaks in soft tones to me and says I am psychotic, but it's going to be all right. I put on… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing… — Marya Hornbacher Bipolar Copy Share Image
You wake up one morning and there it is, sitting in an old plaid bathrobe in your kitchen, unpleasant and unshaved. You… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“The spiritual realm is not the ethereal beyond our lived experience. It is our experience, lived fully and well.” — Marya Hornbacher Religion Copy Share Image
That nothing - not booze, not love, not sex, not work, not moving from state to state - will make the past… — Marya Hornbacher Booze Copy Share Image
When you believe that you are not worthwhile in and of yourself, in the back of your mind you also begin to… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“for the purposes of my own spirituality, it is far more useful to recognize the limitations of my knowledge; to humble myself,… — Marya Hornbacher Knowledge Copy Share Image
