“I could not figure out what they were doing in an ice cream shop, since they couldn't possible eat calories. I imagined they just fed off the misery of less cool people.”

“A serving size on ice cream is like a half a cup. Is that like a joke some guy put on there? "Hey, come here: look what I put for the serving size. Did you see? I just did it as a joke but they're going out like that." You ever know anybody to eat a half a cup of ice cream? "Hey, you wanna go grab something to eat?" "Ah, no. I had a half a cup of ice cream. Ya, a whole half a cup. I just kept eating and eating and eating. I must've had two spoonfuls.”

“The question is: will I get used to a menu with kilojoules instead of calories? I mean, I don’t think anyone even knows how many kilojoules are in a calorie. I had to break out a whiteboard this morning and do calculus just to figure out how many calories were in a glass of water Down Under.”

“But I still couldn't figure out what it all meant. The more I found out, the less I understood.”

“I held up my ice-cream cone in the gesture of a toast. "Number thirteen: Eat ice cream in public."About this one... I don't get it. What's the big deal about eating ice cream?"Fat people aren't allowed to eat in public."What are you talking about?" she said, a bit snobbily in my opinion. "I notice them eating all the time."Exactly."You lost me."It's hard to enjoy the eating experience when you feel everyone's staring at you, thinking, No wonder she's such a fat cow. Look how she eats."I don't think that!"Sure.”

“I thought carefully about the events of the evening and decided that there must be limitations on desires. It wasn't true that I could have anything I wanted. I felt good about understanding that, but I still didn't know how people figured out what it was safe to want. I did know, from my mother's scolding, that 'wanting' was a problem. If the desire could not be filled, then I was greedy and selfish. Since I couldn't figure out how to judge the possibility of fulfilling a desire. (66).”