T-Shirt Swim Club Quotes

“You need to tell yourself that you've got something that they don't; you didn't get their good looks, but you got some stuff they didn't, and now the arrow is pointing up on your qualities while their beauty slowly fades. You tell yourself this so you don't just feel like a genetic loser or a broken person. It's an awful trap. You're dehumanizing yourself and everyone else you meet You're balancing the numbers on some ledger of social values that you've created in your insecurity rather than, you know, actually getting to know people and see if you hit it off.”
― Ian Karmel, T-Shirt Swim Club: Stories from Being Fat in a World of Thin People

“You're a raw nerve in that era of your existence. Life hurts, and that isn't unique to fat people or to any one group, really. Pretty much everyone goes through some version of young-adult malaise. Those years are full of promise and pain.”
― Ian Karmel, T-Shirt Swim Club: Stories from Being Fat in a World of Thin People

“But you don't stop fucking up just because you tell yourself you're done fucking up. The part of you that wants to self-destruct doesn't just go away.”
― Ian Karmel, T-Shirt Swim Club: Stories from Being Fat in a World of Thin People

“I’m a broken person, and the bone may have healed wrong, but I walked on it anyway.”
― Ian Karmel, T-Shirt Swim Club: Stories from Being Fat in a World of Thin People