American companies spend more than $200 billion each year hacking women's bodies into bits and pieces, urging comparisons between self and other, linking value to air-brushed ideals, and as the girls in my seventh-grade class graduated to high school and… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
Trying to describe the process of becoming an alcoholic is like trying to describe air. It's too big and mysterious and pervasive to be defined. Alcohol is everywhere in your life, omnipresent, and you're both aware and unaware of it… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
I'm 38 and I'm single, and I'm having my most intense and gratifying relationship with a dog. But we all learn about love in… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
The kinds of roles dogs fill can be hard to come by in human relationships. We touch the dog or the pet at whim.… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
It happened this way: I fell in love and then, because the love was ruining everything I cared about, I had to fall out. — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
Was he smart enough? Introspective enough? Was it just enough to love him, or should I attach myself to someone who seemed farther ahead… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
Who has the best features? This was a little game, conducted several times and always with the same results, in seventh grade, the time… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
“Life had this unmoored quality, full of voids and barely acknowledged yearnings, and if I'd made a list of things I wanted desperately at… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
The hard things in life, the things you really learn from, happen with a clear mind. — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
When you're starving or wrapped up in a cycle of binge-ing-and-purging, or sexually obsessed with (someone), it is very hard to think about anything… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
The clothes are different: pre-dog, I used to be very finicky and self-conscious about how I looked; now I schlep around in the worst… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
Dogs have such short life spans, it's like a concentrated version of a human life. When they get older, they become much more like… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
Anorexia is a response to cultural images of the female body - waiflike, angular - that both capitulates to the ideal and also mocks… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
By definition, memoir demands a certain degree of introspection and self-disclosure: In order to fully engage a reader, the narrator has to make herself… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
Academic achievement was something I'd always sought as a form of reward. Good grades pleased my parents, good grades pleased my teachers; you got… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
These are big trade-offs for a simple piece of cake - add five hundred calories, subtract well-being, allure, and self-esteem - and the feelings… — Caroline Knapp Copy Share Image
