Marya Hornbacher

There is, in the end, the letting go.

— Marya Hornbacher

“... comprehending little and caring less.”

— Marya Hornbacher

Hatred is so much closer to love than indifference.

— Marya Hornbacher

“Men are embarrassingly easy to seduce.”

— Marya Hornbacher

“My most salient memories”

— Marya Hornbacher

...painfully curious...about how it feels to fall.

— Marya Hornbacher

I'm a driven perfectionist, very self-critical.

— Marya Hornbacher

So many means of self-destruction, so little time.

— Marya Hornbacher

And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.

— Marya Hornbacher

For me, the first sign of oncoming madness is that I'm unable to write.

— Marya Hornbacher

I know for a fact that sickness is easier, but health is more interesting.

— Marya Hornbacher

Falling in love happens so suddenly that it seems, all at once, that you have always been in love.

— Marya Hornbacher

“I began to feel like I was wearing a sign on my forehead that said FUCKED UP in big neon letters.”

— Marya Hornbacher

The biggest fear of my life is living. My second biggest fear is dying.

— Marya Hornbacher

Some people who are obsessed with food become gourmet chefs. Others become eating disorders.

— Marya Hornbacher

“They are solid, real. I am an object, useful but hollow. The absence of thought fills me up.”

— Marya Hornbacher

The joy is an absurd yellow tulip, popping up in my life, contradicting all the evidence that shows it should not be…

— Marya Hornbacher

“perhaps our purpose is, for the time being, to be human, to live on this earth and in this human community, to…

— Marya Hornbacher

My bones are brittle, my heart weak and erratic, my esophagus and stomach riddled with ulcers, my reproductive system shot, my immune…

— Marya Hornbacher

The anoretic operates under the astounding illusion that she can escape the flesh, and, by association, the realm of emotions.

— Marya Hornbacher

I get absolutely shitfaced. I am shitfaced and hyper and ten years old. I am having the time of my life.

— Marya Hornbacher

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

“When we believe ourselves to be alone, we have no responsibility to this world and are answerable to no one.”

— Marya Hornbacher

But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high…

— Marya Hornbacher

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

“Being here, living now, recognizing our smallness, is a spiritual practice. It allows us to be at peace with our humanity. It…

— Marya Hornbacher

We know we need, and so we acquire and eat and eat, past the point of bodily fullness, trying to sate a…

— Marya Hornbacher

“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

When I was growing up, I always felt there was an expectation that I would do one of two things: be great…

— Marya Hornbacher

Hospitalizations in general are blurry. The days are the same, precisely the same. Nothing changes. Life melts down to a simple progression…

— Marya Hornbacher

“But at that moment—the moment of realization that life as I’d been living it would have to end—I felt devastation unlike any…

— Marya Hornbacher

“Steps Six and Seven are often brushed off, especially by the nonbeliever, because they seem to assume a direct relationship with a…

— Marya Hornbacher

“The bragging was the worst. I hear this in schools all over the country, in cafés and restaurants, in bars, on the…

— Marya Hornbacher

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

“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

It is not a sudden leap from sick to well. It is a slow, strange meander from sick to mostly well. The…

— Marya Hornbacher

“At a certain point, an eating disorder ceases to be "about" any one thing. It stops being about your family, or your…

— Marya Hornbacher

Bear in mind, people with eating disorders tend to be both competitive and intelligent. We are incredibly perfectionistic. We often excel in…

— Marya Hornbacher

“The night I shaved it off altogether, a Staff named Mark, whose take-no-prisoners approach I respected and feared, pulled me aside, looked…

— Marya Hornbacher

“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