It has been argued that food and eating have replaced sex as our foremost cultural taboo.7 To some extent I agree with this but would point out that the taboo is not against food, or sex, or flesh, bu...
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 trembl...
If I had been a different sort of person, maybe less impressionable, less intense, less fearful, less utterly dependent upon the perceptions of others - maybe then I would not have bought the cultural...
I have a remarkable ability to delete all better judgment from my brain when I get my head set on something. Everything is done at all costs. I have no sense of moderation, no sense of caution. I have...
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 c...
Hatred is so much closer to love than indifference.
For me, the first sign of oncoming madness is that I'm unable to write.
E così passai attraverso lo specchio, passai nel mondo a rovescio, dove il su è giù e il cibo èingordigia, dove le pareti sono rivestite di specchi convessi, dove la morte è onorevole e la carne debol...
Whether one believes that transformation is effected by the will of an outer force, or the willingness of an inner self, does not change the reality of transformation as a phenomenon of spiritual expe...
When we believe ourselves to be alone, we have no responsibility to this world and are answerable to no one.
We put an extraordinary amount of effort into how we appear, or wish to appear, trying frantically to construct a sense of self out of how we are seen from without. But who are we from within? What ma...
This is the weird aftermath, when it is not exactly over, and yet you have given it up. You go back and forth in your head, often, about giving it up. It’s hard to understand, when you are sitting the...
There is, in fact, an incredible freedom in having nothing left to lose.
The spiritual realm is not the ethereal beyond our lived experience. It is our experience, lived fully and well.
The physical food transubstantiates in our minds into something more ethereal, of human and emotional nurturance, a sense that our hungers are being sated. Even if you are just stuffing handfuls of fr...
The last place I want to be is the hospital, but I'm not stupid. I know when it's time to go in. I am so terrified of myself and of the vast, frightening world, that the psych ward, with its safe lock...
That’s the nice thing about dreams, the way you wake up before you fall.
My mother insulted me, I insulted her, Jeanne, the stepgrandmother, insulted everything in a skirt, and my grandfather just kept right on drinking. We picked at our food, competing for who could eat t...
Madness will push you anywhere it wants. It never tells you where you're going, or why. It tells you it doesn't matter. It persuades you. It dangles something sparkly before you, shimmering like that...
I began to feel like I was wearing a sign on my forehead that said FUCKED UP in big neon letters.