“And when, after fifteen years of bingeing, barfing, starving, needles and tubes and terror and rage, and medical crises and personal failure and loss after loss - when, after all this, you are in your early twenties and staring down a vastly abbreviated life expectancy, and the eating disorder still takes up half your body, half your brain, with its invisible eroding force, when you have spent the majority of your life sick, when you do not yet know what it means to be 'well,' or 'normal,' when you doubt that those words even have meaning anymore, there are still no answers. You will die young, and you have no way to make sense of that fact.You have this: You are thin.”

“I don't think people realize, when they're just getting started on an eating disorder or even when they're in the grip of one, that it is not something that you just "get over." For the vast majority of eating-disordered people, it is something that will haunt you for the rest of your life. You may change your behavior, change your beliefs about yourself and your body, give up that particular way of coping in the world. You may learn, as I have, that you would rather be a human than a human's thin shell. You may get well. But you never forget.”

“Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn't that the point? Happily ever after doesn't mean happy forever. The ever after, what precisely was that? Your dreams, your life, your death, your everything. Was it the blank space that went on without us? The forever after we were gone? ”

“And so, when the chips are down, I must say, though not without a sense of repugnance, that if you wish to show your belief in democracy, you also have to do so when you are in the minority, convinced both intellectually and, not least, in your innermost self, that the majority, in the name of democracy, is crushing everything you stand for and that means something to you, indeed, all that gives you the strength to endure, well, that gives a kind of meaning to your life, something that transcends your own fortuitous lot, one might say. When the heralds of democracy roar, triumphantly bawling out their vulgar victories day after day so that it really makes you suffer, as in my own case, you still have to accept it; I will not let anything else be said about me, he thought.”

“There comes a time in everyone’s life—and I do mean in everyone’s life—when you ask yourself what it is that you’ve been doing with your life. Sometimes you even realize that whatever you’ve been doing all your life, you’ve been doing it wrong. Dead wrong… Son, you want that realization to hit you when you’re 70? Or 50? Or when you’re still young, with your whole life still ahead of you?”

“When someone you love dies, it's normal to lose your faith. I don't want you to lose yours. I want you to believe that there is a bigger force than you in this world, a loving and compassionate force. I want you to believe that your life has meaning and your existence has purpose. And when life is hard, I want you to believe that you'll be given strength to endure it, and that it will get better. I want you to have the peace in your heart you can only have when you believe there is a reason for everything, even if you cannot see it.”