J > J's Quotes

“The future has an ancient heart.”
― Carlo Levi

“In yet another commercial, Oprah somberly says, “Inside every overweight woman is a woman she knows she can be.” This is a popular notion, the idea that the fat among us are carrying a thin woman inside. Each time I see this particular commercial, I think, I ate that thin woman and she was delicious but unsatisfying. And then I think about how fucked up it is to promote this idea that our truest selves are thin women hiding in our fat bodies like imposters, usurpers, illegitimates.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“Doctors are supposed to first do no harm, but when it comes to fat bodies, most doctors seem fundamentally incapable of heeding their oath.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“I am thinking about testimony I’ve heard from other women over the years—women sharing their truths, daring to use their voices to say, “This is what happened to me. This is how I have been wronged.” I’ve been thinking about how so much testimony is demanded of women, and still, there are those who doubt our stories.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“Because I read so much, I was a romantic in my heart of hearts, but my desire to be part of a romantic story was a very intellectual, detached one. I liked the idea of a boy asking me out, taking me on a date, kissing me, but I did not want to actually be alone with a boy, because a boy could hurt me.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“To be clear, the fat acceptance movement is important, affirming, and profoundly necessary, but I also believe that part of fat acceptance is accepting that some of us struggle with body image and haven’t reached a place of peace and unconditional self-acceptance.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“I am not cold. I wasn’t ever cold. My warmth was hidden far away from anything that could bring hurt because I knew I didn’t have the inner scaffolding to endure any more hurt in those protected places.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“Because I am not a touchy-feely person, I always feel this light shock, this surprise, really, when my skin comes into contact with another person’s skin. Sometimes that shock is pleasant, like Oh, here is my body in the world. Sometimes, it is not. I never know which it will be.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“That was something of a revelation to me, that a young man could be kind.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“What does it say about our culture that the desire for weight loss is considered a default feature of womanhood?”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“I am stronger than I am broken.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“It is a powerful lie to equate thinness with self-worth.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“As a woman, as a fat woman, I am not supposed to take up space. And yet, as a feminist, I am encouraged to believe I can take up space. I live in a contradictory space where I should try to take up space but not too much of it, and not in the wrong way, where the wrong way is any way where my body is concerned.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“So many years past being raped, I tell myself what happened is “in the past.” This is only partly true. In too many ways, the past is still with me. The past is written on my body. I carry it every single day. The past sometimes feels like it might kill me. It is a very heavy burden.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
― L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Privilege is being born on third base. Ignorant privilege is thinking you’re there because you hit a triple. Malicious privilege is complaining that those starving outside the ballpark aren’t waiting patiently enough.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“You are a human being, and your birthright is to remain fully human. So you get to be everything: loud quiet bold smart careful impulsive creative joyful big angry curious ravenous ambitious. You are allowed to take up space on this earth with your feelings, your ideas, your body. You do not need to shrink. You do not need to hide any part of yourself, ever.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living

“I think that we are like stars. Something happens to burst us open; but when we burst open and think we are dying; we’re actually turning into a supernova. And then when we look at ourselves again, we see that we’re suddenly more beautiful than we ever were before!”
― C. JoyBell C.

“But for years, my best coping strategy has been work. I have assumed so many responsibilities and said yes to so many things. Working hard creates my own gravity. The more I work, the more I am on terra firma.”
― David Chang, Eat a Peach

“Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“The French author Jules Renard once wrote: If I had my life to live over again, I would ask that not a thing be changed, but that my eyes be opened wider. Wider, I would add, to every reality—not just to the happiness but to every heartache too.”
― Barbara Becker, Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind

“This is how we go forward, step by step, infusing darkness with light.”
― Barbara Becker, Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind

“You might think sitting with someone who is dying means you will be having big conversations about the meaning of life,” a hospice chaplain had advised me. “Wrong! Sometimes, all that’s called for is to just show up and watch Jeopardy! together.”
― Barbara Becker, Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind

“And so it is a truth universally acknowledged that a young woman in possession of vague symptoms like fatigue and pain will be in search of a doctor who believes she is actually sick.”
― Meghan O'Rourke, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

“This seems like one of the hardest things about being sick in the way you’re sick: being sick makes you stressed. But being stressed makes you sicker.”
― Meghan O'Rourke, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

“Ethical loneliness is what happens when wrongs are compounded by going cruelly unacknowledged.”
― Meghan O'Rourke, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

“The tendency in many parts of medicine is, if we can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist, or the patient is cuckoo.”
― Meghan O'Rourke, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness