I stuff my mouth with old fabric and scream until there are no sounds left under my skin.

You’re not dead, but you’re not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl.

I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don’t want to die.

Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care... -Wintergirls

We turned us into wintergirls, and when she tried to leave, I pulled her back into the snow because I was afraid to be alone.

There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.

I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.

So, she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.

They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs.

In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.

Write about the emotions you fear the most.

I was conscious, then, of a different ache, deeper and more sharp than the feeling of bereavement that a hangover will sometimes uncover in the heart.

You’ve got to have confidence in the very thing that makes you unique – then wait for the world to catch up

As a kid my heart would break for the villains.

On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.

Some philosophers see into themselves, and some into their times; still others forge an alliance with the future.

Sometimes people save the best part of themselves for their art.

I just want to say one thing...Thank you Eddie!

We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism.

But since I have a poet's weakness for symbols, I am using this character also as a symbol; he is the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for.

The most un-American thing you can do is to stifle dissent