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I either want to be completely recovered or completely emaciated. It's the in between that I can't stand, the limbo of failure where you know that you haven't done your best at one or the other: dying or living.

Marya Hornbacher

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Marya Hornbacher
Age: 50
Born: 1974
Born: April 4
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Failure
Completely
Dying
Stand
Emaciated
Either
Limbo
Living
Recovered
Best
Havens
Done
Haven

More quotes by Marya Hornbacher

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I began to measure things in absence instead of presence.
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My students know I have a life, they know I've written about my life. They know some detail, probably more than they know about their physics teacher, but I would've told them anyway!
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People take the feeling of full for granted.
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The anoretic operates under the astounding illusion that she can escape the flesh, and, by association, the realm of emotions.
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There is, in the end, the letting go.
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And it's California, where everything is powerfully strange. Everyone wants it to be home. Everyone left where he or she was from with dreams of transformation. Everyone runs away to California at least once, or at least all the lonely, hungry people do.
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...painfully curious...about how it feels to fall.
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My parents say that even as a very, very little kid, the way that I acted was dramatically different from other little kids.
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Some people who are obsessed with food become gourmet chefs. Others become eating disorders.
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I had a love affair with books, with characters and their words. Books kept me company. When the voices of the book faded, as with the last long chord of a record, the back cover crinkling closed, I could swear I heard a door click shut.
Marya Hornbacher
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The problem is that you don't just choose recovery. You have to keep choosing recovery, over and over and over again. You have to make that choice 5-6 times each day. You have to make that choice even when you really don't want to. It's not a single choice, and it's not easy.
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All of us have theories about the world and about ourselves. We will go to great lengths to prove ourselves right because it keeps the world in our head coherent and understandable.
Marya Hornbacher
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I'm a driven perfectionist, very self-critical.
Marya Hornbacher
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My brain sometimes departs from the agreed-upon reality, and my private reality is a very lonely place. But in the end, I'm not sure I wish I'd never gone there.
Marya Hornbacher
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But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it's a very long fall, and we hit the ground with a thud.
Marya Hornbacher
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In our absence, the violet early evening light pours in the bay window, filling the still room like water poured into a glass. The glass is delicate. The thin, tight surface of the liquid light trembles. But it does not break. Time does not pass. Not yet.
Marya Hornbacher
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I have a remarkable ability to delete all better judgement from my brain when I get my head set on something. I have no sense of moderation, no sense of caution. I have no sense pretty much.
Marya Hornbacher
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I know how this feels: the tightening of the chest, the panic, the what-have-I-done-wait-I-was-kidding. Eating disorders linger so long undetected, eroding the body in silence, and then they strike. The secret is out. You're dying.
Marya Hornbacher
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You can't teach an ear, you can't teach talent, but you can teach people who have those things not to just fly by the seat of their pants.
Marya Hornbacher
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The joy is an absurd yellow tulip, popping up in my life, contradicting all the evidence that shows it should not be there.
Marya Hornbacher