Chantal Akerman Quotes

When I was growing up, I was teased for being too skinny. I went to summer camp when I was 11. I wore shorts, and the nurse said to me, in front of all my friends, that I was anorexic and that she had to monitor me to make sure I was eating. Because of that trauma, I never wore short pants or short skirts until I was 20.

From the time I was thirteen, there was a constant struggle between MGM and me - whether or not to eat, how much to eat, what to eat. I remember this more vividly than anything else about my childhood.

Besides, I'd heard too many Karen Carpenter tales at Gladstone PTA meetings, and they often took the form of boasts. The prestigious diagnosis of anorexia seemed much coveted not only by the students but by their mothers, who would compete over whose daughter ate less. No wonder the poor girls were a mess.

I wasn't strong enough to have an eating disorder. I tried to go anorexic for a good three hours. I ate ice and celery, but that's not even anorexic. And I quit. I was like, 'Ma, can you make me a sandwich? Like, immediately.'

I was a fat child; I was asthmatic. No wonder I'm a hypochondriac.

But I was very, very unhappy because my mother was very charming and generous, but to me, very dominating.

It was between the ages of 14 and 20 and I started off not eating at all, maybe an apple a day.

I'd probably be one of these terribly over-protective parents whose children become a neurotic wreck because they've never been exposed to real life.

I've had a love-hate 'relationship with food for most of my life.

There are models who don't eat. That's worrisome - you need the right amount of gas to get going.

Anorexia is such a self-consuming, selfish disease. It's all about you. Becoming a mother, all of a sudden it wasn't about me anymore.

And if you look at pictures of Eleanor between 1918 and 1921, she becomes anorexic. She really loses a tremendous amount of weight. That's when her teeth really go bad. It's a terrible, terrible time for her. And she has five children, ranging in age from three to 10. It's an emotionally terrible ordeal.

Jane-Sweetie, we've talked about your weight-" my mother began. I'm only eight years old," I said. "How about I promise to be anorexic later?

I used to starve myself to death.

The stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking didn't make her skinny, it made her cry.

For years I was an undiagnosed anorexic, suffering from a little-known variant of the disease, where, freakishly, the appetite turns in on itself and demands more and more food, forcing the sufferer to gain several stones in weight and wear men's V-necked pullovers. My condition has stabilised now, but I can never stray too far from cocoa-based products and I keep a small cracknel-type candy in my brassiere at all times. Fortunately, I wear a 'D' cup so there is plenty of room for sweetmeats.

I finally understood that by being on a perpetual diet, I had practiced a "disordered" form of eating my whole life. I restricted when I was hungry and in need of nutrition and binged when I was so grotesquely full I couldn't be comfortable in any position by lying down. Diets that tell people what to eat or when to eat are the practices inbetween. And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating.

They say our mothers really know how to push our buttons - because they installed them

She was convinced that she was anorexic, because every time she looked in the mirror she did indeed see a fat person.

The only number that would ever be enough is 0. Zero pounds, zero life, size zero, double-zero, zero point. Zero in tennis is love. I finally get it.

Anorexics never have boyfriends. ... That's one way to know you don't have anorexia, if you have a boyfriend.

On her extreme thinness during her 'Ally McBeal' years: "I started under-eating, over-exercising, pushing myself too hard and brutalizing my immune system. I guess I just didn't find time to eat. I am much more healthy these days.

We turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how not to need.

I couldn't be anorexic because I like food too much, and I couldn't be bulimic because I hate throwing up too much.

I have a fierce eating disorder that has survived even bariatric surgery. I got even fatter after that! Hey, maybe fat people are just trying to get closer to others, did anybody ever that of that?!