My anorexia keeps me company, comforts me.
-- Narrator (Chapter 4)

Importance: The author utilizes this quotation to explore the experience of living with an eating disorder. While Anna’s anorexia is physically killing her, and compromising her relationships and sense of identity, it is also a maladaptive coping tool. Engaging in behaviors gives the narrator a false sense of comfort and purpose when she feels lonely, worthless, and afraid.

And like most anorexics she looks like she is trying to starve the feeling out.
-- Narrator (Chapter 14)

Importance: When Anna enters treatment for the first time, she takes note of the other patients. Contrary to pop culture’s portrayal of eating disorders as extreme diets, eating disorders are complex mental illnesses. The eating disorder voice encourages the women in the facility to use behaviors to assuage uncomfortable emotions and cope with trauma.

She will clutch the orange for the rest of the meal and eat with her other...
-- Narrator (Chapter 16)