“Every morning I watched the sun rise and read a highly religious little meditation book and tried having a conversation with God.… — Marya Hornbacher Books Copy Share Image
“You begin to forget what it means to live. You forget things. You forget that you used to feel all right. You… — Marya Hornbacher Memory Copy Share Image
Somewhere in the back of my brain there exists this certainty: The body is no more than a costume, and can be… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
And it's California, where everything is powerfully strange. Everyone wants it to be home. Everyone left where he or she was from… — Marya Hornbacher California Copy Share Image
Soon madness has worn you down. It’s easier to do what it says than argue. In this way, it takes over your… — Marya Hornbacher Absurd Copy Share Image
“We put an extraordinary amount of effort into how we appear, or wish to appear, trying frantically to construct a sense of… — Marya Hornbacher Identity Copy Share Image
“It is a visual temper tantrum. You are making an ineffective statement about this and that, a grotesque, self-defeating mockery of cultural… — Marya Hornbacher Beauty Copy Share Image
And so I went through the looking glass, stepped into the netherworld, where up is down and food is greed, where convex… — Marya Hornbacher Death Copy Share Image
• Eating disorders are addictions. You become addicted to a number of their effects. The two most basic and important: the pure… — Marya Hornbacher Addiction Copy Share Image
“My generation was weaned on subliminal advertising, stupid television, slasher movies, insipid grocery-store literature, MTV, VCRs, fast food, infomercials, glossy ads, diet… — Marya Hornbacher Books Copy Share Image
“Am I ultimately alone? How many of us have asked that question—drunk or sober—when we’ve wondered if there was a God or… — Marya Hornbacher Self Copy Share Image
“You cannot explain, with the limitations of language and inexperience, why your body can cause such a sudden, fumbling response in someone… — Marya Hornbacher Body Copy Share Image
Madness will push you anywhere it wants. It never tells you where you're going, or why. It tells you it doesn't matter.… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“This is the weird aftermath, when it is not exactly over, and yet you have given it up. You go back and… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“I learned very early to choose my lines carefully. I still have a terrible habit, when people pause too long between words,… — Marya Hornbacher Fashion Copy Share Image
“We feign disinterest and laugh, and creep into the kitchen some nights, a triangle of light spilled on the floor form the… — Marya Hornbacher Empty space Copy Share Image
The idea began to sink in, more than it ever had, that I might be crazy, in the traditional sense of the… — Marya Hornbacher Amen Copy Share Image
I have never been normal about my body. It has always seemed to me a strange and foreign entity. I don't know… — Marya Hornbacher Body Copy Share Image
“By November, you wish you were dead. You want nothing more. Every day, every fucking day, you run up the steps of… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“The lesson of daily spiritual practice is not a complicated one and requires no special equipment; we are simply learning to love.… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
It's really interesting to me how all of us can experience the exact same event, and yet come away with wildly disparate… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“It is easy to write off childlike faith in the universe and childlike wonder at the world as simply a lack of… — Marya Hornbacher Childlike faith Copy Share Image
I either want to be completely recovered or completely emaciated. It's the in between that I can't stand, the limbo of failure… — Marya Hornbacher Death Copy Share Image
You never come back, not all the way. Always there is an odd distance between you and the people you love and… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
And so I am feeling numb. It's a curious feeling, and I get it all the time. My attention to the world… — Marya Hornbacher Attention Copy Share Image
“Call it the feeling of love that connects us. Call it the creative force that drives us to transform. Call it our… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
All of us carry around countless bags of dusty old knickknacks dated from childhood: collected resentments, long list of wounds of greater… — Marya Hornbacher Absolute certainty Copy Share Image
I know how this feels: the tightening of the chest, the panic, the what-have-I-done-wait-I-was-kidding. Eating disorders linger so long undetected, eroding the… — Marya Hornbacher Anxiety Copy Share Image
“When we doubt, we learn to accept that we may not ever know. When we question, we learn to accept that there… — Marya Hornbacher Doubt Copy Share Image
My god! people say. You have so much self-control! And later: My god. You're so, so sick. When people say this, they… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
• This seems impossible to me. It seems biologically impossible to stay the same size, although I must. It seems one must… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“Whether one believes that transformation is effected by the will of an outer force, or the willingness of an inner self, does… — Marya Hornbacher Change Copy Share Image
I developed a deep, abiding fear of jeans, which I still have. I hold my breath and shut my eyes when I… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
I am feeling fine. I remember these words and recite them. These are the things you say when asked how you are.… — Marya Hornbacher Detachment Copy Share Image
In her presence, I was reminded again of why I was an anoretic: fear. Of my needs, for food, for sleep, for… — Marya Hornbacher Being human Copy Share Image
There are women in my closet, hanging on the hangers. a different woman for each suit, each dress, each pair of shoes.… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
The problem is that you don't just choose recovery. You have to keep choosing recovery, over and over and over again. You… — Marya Hornbacher Choices Copy Share Image
I do have faith. I don't have faith that a God exists, nor do I have faith that one does not; I… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
The idea of my future simultaneously thrilled and terrified me, like standing at the lip of a very sheer cliff- I could… — Marya Hornbacher Adventure Copy Share Image
Anorexia and bulimia seem to be getting much more common in boys, men, and women of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds; they… — Marya Hornbacher Age Copy Share Image
