Hannah Howard > Quotes

“I like the hazelnut the best; it tastes like secrecy, like the promise that more will be revealed.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“They say there is an anorexic personality: people-pleasing, timid, perfectionistic, inflexible. And a contrasting bulimic one: impulsive, dramatic, erratic. I am neither. Or rather, I am all of the above.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I vow to only eat veggies and yogurt, the kind without sugar or fat or joy.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I am a person who loves my sleep, and I am running on empty. Or running on caffeine”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I’m watching my figure, too, like an enemy. Watching it and willing it to shrink, seeing everything but myself in the mirror.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I don’t particularly want him, but being wanted makes up for it.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“At the Skype cooking school, The Chef & The Dish, Paola teaches from her own kitchen in Vergiate, on her own time.”
― Hannah Howard, Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family

“I gained and lost weight faster than my wardrobe or brain could keep up.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I want to be badass and free from the patriarchy and skinny.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“And yet. I think of how long I could go without eating—hours, days, maybe forever. I have that anorexic twist of the brain. Skinnier is better, always, when it comes to my own body, tall, unwieldy.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I’m not unhappy, just excited about cheese.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“This place may steal our life, but we can’t let it steal our laughter.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“So much joy that my rib cage threatens to shatter. It’s a hiding place—armor, distraction.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I’m too cool, of course, for this whole anorexia thing. Too smart. Eating disorders seem cheesy, predictable, fodder for after-school specials and teenage girls.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I know the impossible bind of being valued for being sexy and condemned for being sexy.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“When French people were asked to free associate after hearing the phrase “chocolate cake,” the most common response was “celebration.” And for Americans? “Guilt.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I wonder if that’s the pattern. First love. Then disgust.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“Food is so many things beyond awards and notoriety; it is a point of passion and connection, a way that we show our love and commitment to one another. It’s a powerful way to cultivate community and family.”
― Hannah Howard, Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family

“Grapefruits I can eat. They spray citrus perfume into the cold air and I can pick and pick on their generous flesh for only a hundred calories.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“Go write. Live in a small city, like Seattle or Austin or something. Write. Be young and poor. Get a weird job. Write some more. Corporate steakland is not for you.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“It’s a crime to leave a piece of cookie, broken, naked like that, prone on the platter. It’s my duty to eat it. The”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“He is a purist glutton—there can never be enough meat, drugs, booze, excess, celebrities, and big, obscure words.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“Excess and deprivation and then more excess to ease the agony of all that deprivation.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I want to eat the pastéis de nata and I don’t want to eat the pastéis de nata. I am trapped. Either way, I will let myself down.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“I know the impossible bind of being valued for being sexy and condemned for being sexy. I know that my body is a source of both vulnerability and power and that navigating this is and will continue to be impossible. I want to be badass and free from the patriarchy. I want to be badass and free from the patriarchy and skinny.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“Life is big and scary. Food is constant, safe, dependable.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“Please please please. I am twenty-nine. I don’t want to be thirty, forty, fifty and at war with myself, day after day.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“No matter how thin I get, it is not enough. I know what these people do not: at my core, I am a fat girl, and always will be. More than anything, my job is to make sure they don’t find out.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“If I drink only coffee all day, I will allow myself dinner. If I don’t eat dinner, I can eat an oatmeal raisin cookie. I bargain with myself.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

“There is a group of superskinny ladies in small dresses at these parties, their hair ironed straight. “Who are they?” I ask Josh. “Oh, those are the chef groupies.”
― Hannah Howard, Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen