“I used to think, that when my old inner demons started creeping back into my life, that it was a sign of failure or moral weakness. But the saints have shown me that part of the human condition is to struggle with the same sins and suffering over and over again. Once I accepted the fact that I’d probably always have to be on guard against spiritual attacks related to food and my weight, I began to really recover.”

“I have had many successes and many failures in my life. My successes have always been for different reasons, but my failures have always been for the same reason: I said yes when I meant no.”

“It is always tempting to try to shut out the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition, but once it has broken through the cautionary barricades we have erected against it, we can never see the world in the same way again.”

“Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?”

“The stark, pedestrian images used by filmmakers (probably out of financial necessity) expressed nothing, symbolically or metaphorically. The only purpose they served was to remind me that a huge chunk of my life is completely over, even though I will probably live 60 more years. There are so many things that will never happen to me again, and I never even noticed when those things stopped occurring. And this does not mean I wish I had my old life back, because I like my new life better; I was just shocked to discover how much of what used to be central to my existence doesn't even matter to me anymore.”

“Even knowing that my presence brought a shadow over the lives of my loved ones, I can't regret the experiences I've had with them. They gave me life, becoming an integral part of my soul. They healed me when I was broken and somehow they recovered those parts of me, I thought lost forever.”