Quotes from Steven Levenkron

She began to be reassured by these pains, tangible symbols of her success in becoming thinner than anyone else. Her only identity was being "the skinniest." She had to feel it.

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

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.

She ran her hands over her body as if to bid it good-bye. The hipbones rising from a shrunken stomach were razor-sharp. Would they be lost in a sea of fat? She counted her ribs bone by bone. Where would they go?

She began to be reassured by these pains, tangible symbols of her success in becoming thinner than anyone else. Her only identity was being "the skinniest." She had to feel it.

Kessa ran her fingers over her stomach. Flat. But was it flat enough? Not quite. She still had some way to go. Just to be safe, she told herself. Still, it was nice the way her pelvic bones rose like sharp hills on either side of her stomach. I love bones. Bones are beautiful.

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.

Kessa began to cut her meat into tiny pieces. As a whole it was unmanageable, frightening; but divided and arranged, the meat could be controlled. She cut four pieces. She'd count to four between each bite.

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.

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.

Well, Kessa, I am glad to see that you're taking your body seriously. I shudder when I see the girls leaving class and heading for the nearest hamburger, coke, and French fry station.The thought of them pouring all those dead calories into themselves makes me want to cry. You'd think after a rigorous dance class they'd have more respect for their bodies.

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.

If you're told what you should be but not helped to become it, you don't get there. And it makes you ashamed for failing to. When a person you depend on keeps telling you that it's time to 'move on,' 'to grow up,' it makes you feel that who you are now is inadequate or uninteresting.

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.

I wish I felt brave." "Do you know how a brave person feels?" "How?" "Scared.

She sat for a long time in the chair, rocking gently, wishing she were thinner. Somehow that would make all of this turmoil vanish.

Even a battered child is sure that it's his fault that his parent beats him. He hopes someday to become good enough so that the beating will stop. I guess the scariest thing for a child to believe is that a parent might be wrong about him—or her.

If we don't have to change self-destructive or wasteful patterns, we won't. But basically we are resourceful creatures, and if we can tolerate deprivation and fear, we can also change and learn how to have more healthy behavior and different values.

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