Hilary Mantel Quotes

I love the way my weight fluctuates in the newspapers. It was 18 stone and then people look at a bad picture of me and add a few more stone on. I think the highest was 22 stone.

I'm kind of fat.

If you've stacked on the weight over time, and if you don't have any health issues, you don't realise. So you'll see yourself in the mirror and, yes, you know what the scales say, but you don't actually see what other people see.

I felt different from everyone else - like an alien. The looks I received when I was 320 pounds were ones usually reserved for three-eyed monsters, half-man half-woman reptiles, creatures with hideous rolls of skin that sweated profusely and jiggled when they walked. That last one really was me.

When you're overweight like I've been my whole life, you've been made fun of. And, uh, it's not good growing up.

At 26 or 27, I was fatter than anyone.

I don't know why we have this shame about obesity, but it's kind of a good thing that we have this shame about obesity - we shouldn't accept the fact that everyone is obese.

I'm 240, and I'm not fat.

I'm looking like Atlas, not Professor Klump.

When I gain a pound it's in the headlines.

I don't want to get fat.

If anything bad happens, the media will leap on it. We're under a huge obligation to be successful.

I put the weight on after we were together. I put on about 20 pounds when we got married, and people were flipping their lids. And then I put on more after that, and I've gone up and down since then.

Commercials are not the only exposure that obesity gets on TV. It is by no means a rarity on the wonderful Judge Judy's show when both plaintiff and accused all but literally fill the screen.

I'm clean and sober for over a year and no one seems to care! They're like, 'Oh, her dramatic weight gain.' So, stop making fun of me!

I was just sick of being fat, you know? You get sick of it. It just really, it's a tiring lifestyle to have.

I had a nervous breakdown when I was 17 or 18, when I had to go and work with Marky Mark and Herb Ritts. It didn't feel like me at all. I felt really bad about straddling this buff guy. I didn't like it.

I didn't understand why people cared about my hair or my makeup or my clothing. It was like, 'I'm a prosecutor. I'm not a model. I'm not an actress.'

I'm really tired, incredibly tired of hearing people say that fashion is behind anorexia.

When I graduated, I was my biggest ever: 15 stone, with a boyfriend - my first - of just 11 stone. I was 23 years old. It wasn't just affecting my career: it was a health issue as well.

Yes, I talk about eating disorders and you know, excessive dieting and excessive exercising can be a sign of a mental illness... but when we talk about eating disorders... the issue is not the food or the exercise, the issue is a lack of healthy conception of self. That is the issue.

My weight is this permanent topic that just doesn't fade away. Most days, I am fine with people talking about it. That doesn't bother me as much as how people use the fact to promote their own ventures.

I was really fat in school.

There was a time in my life where I was very depressed, I had lost all self-esteem. I came to a point where I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror, I had gained weight.

I think if people want to have surgery then fine, if it makes you feel better, brilliant. But it does annoy me when you're being accused of it, and it's not nice when people are commenting being like 'Eughh, what has she done to her face?' And I'm like 'Oh my god, I've done nothing, this is actually my face.'