“The utter absence of proof for a proposition is proof of a successful conspiracy to destroy all proof.”

“It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness.”

“The most challenging part of respecting our bodies and healing compulsive eating is the conscious decision to question what keeps us bound and silenced. Until we can sit in our own skin and fully occupy the physical space we’ve been given, we will be apologetic about our bodies. And even when we lose weight because we stuck to a diet, we will remain frightened of ourselves because we know that it’s the diet that’s keeping us thin, not our own capacity to stay true to what we know or want. On diets, we are still relying on the big powerful other to know what’s best and to save us. And whether it’s a good daddy or a good diet that rescues us, we remain victims and food our perpetrator.”

“Reading would make me brilliant, but writing would make me infinite.”

“So, don’t believe anyone who says that since nature is based on a struggle for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals survive not by eliminating each other or keeping everything for themselves, but by cooperating and sharing. This applies most definitely to pack hunters, such as wolves or killer whales, but also to our closest relatives, the primates.”

“Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.”

“December, being the last month of the year, cannot help but make us think of what is to come.”

“You can have the whole world looking out for you, Pari, but it is not a substitute for that one special person to share your life with.”