Feast Quotes

“I vow to only eat veggies and yogurt, the kind without sugar or fat or joy.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“They say there is an anorexic personality: people-pleasing, timid, perfectionistic, inflexible. And a contrasting bulimic one: impulsive, dramatic, erratic. I am neither. Or rather, I am all of the above.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I am a person who loves my sleep, and I am running on empty. Or running on caffeine”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I like the hazelnut the best; it tastes like secrecy, like the promise that more will be revealed.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“When French people were asked to free associate after hearing the phrase “chocolate cake,” the most common response was “celebration.” And for Americans? “Guilt.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“We’re supposed to be just-enough screwed up,” she says that night. “And that’s acceptable, even necessary. And then, when the screwed up takes over, everyone wonders what happened.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“They know what it is like to look at yourself in the mirror and feel punched.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I’m tired and ready to be horizontal, to be far away from this man who I may or may not know.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“How did you like living in LA?” friends will inquire, later, but the truth is, I could have been anywhere”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I don’t know what to do,” I tell my therapist, feeling like I may drown in my own failure.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I thought I could pay for skinniness in the currency of self-hatred. I’m filthy rich with it.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“There is a group of superskinny ladies in small dresses at these parties, their hair ironed straight. “Who are they?” I ask Josh. “Oh, those are the chef groupies.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“He is a purist glutton—there can never be enough meat, drugs, booze, excess, celebrities, and big, obscure words.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I am empty of everything I crave: good food, meaning, love.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I like wearing layers, stretchy pants.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I gained and lost weight faster than my wardrobe or brain could keep up.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“Excess and deprivation and then more excess to ease the agony of all that deprivation.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“Because my BMI is no longer dangerously low, nobody can force me to see a nutritionist. I have read the whole health section at Barnes & Noble. I can figure out what to eat.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“My lunch is this weird tofu salad I have discovered at the health food store and am obsessed with because a big container has only one hundred calories. (Or says it has one hundred calories? In my paranoia, I wonder if it’s mislabeled.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I have become haunted by the scale. No number is okay.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“Fight loneliness with hunger, smash anger with deprivation, combat heart-sinking pain with the swoosh of the stupid fucking elliptical. Count calories”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I’m not unhappy, just excited about cheese.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“So much joy that my rib cage threatens to shatter. It’s a hiding place—armor, distraction.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“Still, I ache for skinnier. The promised land.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“And yet. I think of how long I could go without eating—hours, days, maybe forever. I have that anorexic twist of the brain. Skinnier is better, always, when it comes to my own body, tall, unwieldy.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I want to be badass and free from the patriarchy and skinny.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I know the impossible bind of being valued for being sexy and condemned for being sexy.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I’m too cool, of course, for this whole anorexia thing. Too smart. Eating disorders seem cheesy, predictable, fodder for after-school specials and teenage girls.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I know that it is not just my body that is fucked but my brain.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“If I drink only coffee all day, I will allow myself dinner. If I don’t eat dinner, I can eat an oatmeal raisin cookie. I bargain with myself.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen