Body Stuff Quotes

“He lay in bed open-eyed in the dark. There were intestinal moans from his left side, where gas makes a hairpin turn at the splenic flexure. He felt a mass of phlegm wobbling in his throat but he didn’t want to get out of bed to expel it, so he swallowed the whole nasty business, a slick syrupy glop. This was the texture of his life. If someone ever writes his true biography, it will be a chronicle of gas pains and skipped heartbeats, grinding teeth and dizzy spells and smothered breath, with detailed descriptions of Bill leaving his desk to walk to the bathroom and spit up mucus, and we see photographs of ellipsoid clots of cells, water, organic slimes, mineral salts and spotty nicotine. Or descriptions just as long and detailed of Bill staying where he is and swallowing.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“As one might guess, I was easily roused by the grosser habits of the human body--toilet business not least of all. The very fact that other people moved their bowels filled me with awe. Any function of the body that one hid behind closed doors titillated me. I recall one of my early relationships--not a heavy love affair, just a light one--was with a Russian man with a wonderful sense of humor who permitted me to squeeze the pus from his pimples on his back and shoulders. To me, this was the greatest intimacy. Before that, still young and neurotic, just allowing a man to listen to me urinate was utter humiliation, torture, and therefore, I thought, proof of profound love and trust”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“It is hard to express dissatisfaction or have the arguments I want to have because I feel like I'm already on thin ice by virtue of being fat”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“at eleven years old
the doctor weighed me
& afterward,
my mother told me
i was too fat
& that i needed to
go on a diet
immediately.
for an entire. year,
food barely passed
through my lips.
i did not even allow myself
to take a sip of water
because i wanted to be
so thin that i
could blow away
with the slightest breeze-
d i s a p p e a r .
i dropped sixty pounds
in a few short months
& i had to wear long sleeves
to cover up my
only catharsis.

- everybody told me how good i looked, though”
― Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in This One

“at eleven years old
the doctor weighed me
& afterward,
my mother told me
i was too fat
& that i needed to
go on a diet
immediately.
for an entire year,
food barely passed
through my lips.
i did not even allow myself
to take a sip of water
because i wanted to be
so thin that i
could blow away
with the slightest breeze-
d i s a p p e a r .
i dropped sixty pounds
in a few short months
& i had to wear long sleeves
to cover up my
only catharsis.

- everybody told me how good i looked, though”
― Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in This One

“there are
some mothers
who will warn you

to never ever
(ever ever)
touch the stove,

but there are
some mothers who
will drag you right to it

kicking & screaming,
laughing
as they

watch the flames
lick at your
fingertips.

- when you're taught to see the world through fire, nothing looks safe.”
― Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in This One