Status Updates From Brave ragazze: Una storia d...

"... , I'd say i was scared about how I'd cope outside. But the truth is, I hated leaving hospital, because that was the only place where I didn't hate myself for eating and not excercising, because it wasn't my fault there. Bach home, everything was my responsibility—the eating, the exercising, the living. Who needed it?" (p. 190)

"I had now spent more than two years in hospital and I was—I knew it, even though I couldn't bear to fully say it—fully institutionalised. We all were. People become institutionalised for two reasons: they have been in the institution for too long, or they prefer it to the outside world. With us, it was both. Ever since my first day at Hospital One, I'd dread the day I was discharged. When asked why I was crying..."

"Religious people talk of souls, scientists prefer DNA, others use words like identity and essence. But I think the thing that makes us truly who we are is the part of our brain that chooses which experiences will pierce us the most deeply." (p. 33)

"Doctors call it the 'precipitant', or trigger: the moment that sets off the anorexia. I knew some girls whose illness was sparked by what most people would see as an obvious trigger: a father commenting that his daughter looks 'a bit plump' in a family photo, a teenager wanting to be the same clothing size as her friend. But I know many others who were triggered by something far less predictable: ..." (p. 16)

Love being anorexic