Marya Hornbacher Quotes

This little kid pointed at me and said, 'You look disgusting!' That was the first time I thought maybe I did. I decided I'd better start eating. I'm just thankful that I made it through with relatively few scars.

I think her friends were worried that the bulimia might come back, about some psychological slide, and she was given breathing space to some extent by the media as much as she ever has been.

The key to me recovering from drug addiction was figuring out why I was so upset and why I hated myself so much. I realised it was all to do with the way I was viewed by other people.

When you grow up with a significant amount of trauma, you are realizing it as you get older, and you're realizing the ways you can recover from that trauma. The things that I have witnessed and that I have been through, it's going to take a lifetime to undo.

Scars crossed her welded wrists.

This is the very boring part of eating disorders, the aftermath. When you eat and hate that you eat. And yet of course you must eat. You don’t really entertain the notion of going back. You, with some startling new level of clarity, realize that going back would be far worse than simply being as you are. This is obvious to anyone without an eating disorder. This is not always obvious to you.

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 party line that thinness is the be-all and end-all of goals. Maybe if my family had not been in utter chaos most of the time, maybe if my parents were a little better at dealing with their own lives maybe if I'd gotten help sooner, or if I'd gotten different help, maybe if I didn't so fiercely cherish my secret, or if I were not such a good liar, or were not quite so empty inside... maybe.

But my activities have been pretty much focused in the last almost 30 years on the recovery, of my own recovery, the understanding for my family of my recovery.

Anorexia taught me to love life and to realise that starving yourself to death is a bloody waste of time. It's awful, and it hurts so many people around you. It's a terribly selfish thing to do.

I think my anorexia was to do with being a teenager, not being in films.

Doing everything with one arm, being well-known, and having a book and a movie, it's fairly abnormal. As far as just not having to worry about past experiences, I've healed very well.

What distresses me at times is that I meet a lot of people in their 40's, 50's, 60's, who still say they're a victim of child abuse.

Eating disorders are shrouded in secrecy, and there are so many things I felt very ashamed of that I could never talk about. Even though I have fully recovered, there were still things that I needed to go through again and work through.

I must be an anorexic because an anorexic looks in the mirror and sees a fat person.

Stop trying to find something in food that will make you feel better. I used to have eating disorders; I'd binge and purge all the time: fried oysters, po' boys, muffulettas, beignets, coffee and doughnuts. I tried to medicate myself with food when people made fun of me or hit me with a bat in school. I'd always turn to food.

I feel like most actresses kind of have issues in body dysmorphia.

It has been said that time heals all wounds. I don't agree. The wounds remain. Time - the mind, protecting its sanity - covers them with some scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone.

The automobile crash was... devastating in ways that I still cannot really bear to think about... It took me many years to recover. In some ways, I never have.

After my accident, I never worried about how I looked.

I think every girl always has doubts about her body.

I was in so much emotional pain as a young girl that whatever distracted me from how I felt about myself was fine by me.

It's funny: I've joked that 'Sharp Objects,' 'To the Bone,' and 'Dietland' are my self-harm trilogy, and each one is a different side of that triangle, with 'Dietland' really about fighting back.

Girls are so in their head about their body image. It doesn't matter how confident you are - it's hormones!

I think losing out on jobs and, you know, being judged on your appearance... I definitely grew a second skin and got used to it, but more so now, I've realised it definitely contributed to a lot of things I feel about myself.

I've become very aware of body issues and body confidence.