21 Quotes by Steven Levenkron

She used to look forward to changing in the locker room when other girls stole shocked glances at her emaciated body last spring. Now they would look at her and think she was fat--just as fat as all the other girls, maybe even fatter. Nothing separated her from the parade of thunder thighs trooping up the stairs from the locker room to the gym.

[. . .] and in addition to the feeling of being full there was another more terrifying one, as if a hundred appetites were raging out of control within her. She couldn't explain it, but she felt as if everything was in chaos and something awful was going to happen. She had eaten and now something terrible would occur.

The nerves of the skin send pain signals to the brain to warn us of the danger from and impending injury. In the case of self-inflicted wounding, this pain acts as the body's own defense mechanism to stop one from proceeding in the effort at physical injury. If a person proceeds despite the pain, that means that he or she is motivated by something stronger than the pain, something that makes him or her capable of ignoring or enduring it.

Soon I’ll be thinner than all of you, she swore to herself. And then I’ll be the winner. The thinner is the winner.

How silly people were to eat. They thought they needed food for energy, but they didn’t. Energy came from will, from self-control.

Repetition brings familiarity, and familiarity is the opposite of the unknown.

Self-mutilation is a frightening barrier that keeps us from seeing a person who is lost, in pain, and in desperate need of help.

From the newsstands a dozen models smiled up at her from a dozen magazine covers, smiled in thin-faced, high-cheekboned agreement to Kessa’s new discovery. They knew the secret too. They knew thin was good, thin was strong; thin was safe.

If you want your daughter to change in a profound way – to change from only trusting herself and her own behaviors to trusting others, you, her family – you will have to bring a new energy to your relation with Kessa. If she has to overcome this all by herself, it will take longer, and she may never be close to you.