Fat Quotes

“Fat’ is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her.

I mean, is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ‘shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or ‘cruel’? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? I’m not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain…

I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadn’t seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!’

‘Well,’ I said, slightly nonplussed, ‘the last time you saw me I’d just had a baby.’

What I felt like saying was, ‘I’ve produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren’t either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?’ But no – my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!

I’ve got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don’t want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I’d rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before ‘thin’. And frankly, I’d rather they didn’t give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons.”
― J.K. Rowling

“We fatties have a bond, dude. It's like a secret society. We got all kinds of shit you don't know about. Handshakes, special fat people dances-we got these secret fugging lairs in the center of the earth and we go down there in the middle of the night when all the skinny kids are sleeping and eat cake and friend chicken and shit. Why d'you think Hollis is still sleeping, kafir? Because we were up all night in the secret lair injecting butter frosting into our veins. ...A fatty trusts another fatty.”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“Enormous? Did you just call me FAT? I am not fat. - Jace”
― Cassandra Clare

“Anger as soon as fed is dead-
'Tis starving makes it fat. ”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems

“I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.”
― George Saunders, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

“A narrow mind and a fat head invariably come on the same person.”
― Zig Ziglar

“I do not think you are in any danger of starving," Maximus said. "The surgeon said only two weeks ago that you are too fat."

"The devil!" Berkley said indignantly, sitting up; and Maximus snorted in amusement at having provoked him.”
― Naomi Novik, His Majesty's Dragon

“Every weight loss program, no matter how positively it’s packaged, whispers to you that you’re not right. You’re not good enough. You’re unacceptable and you need to be fixed.”
― Kim Brittingham, Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large

“All worries are less with wine.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Anorexia isn't about being fat, it's about having fat.”
― Caroline Kettlewell, Skin Game

“Leah once said that she’d rather have people call her fat directly than have to sit there and listen to them talking shit about some other girl’s weight. I actually think I agree with that. Nothing is worse than the secret humiliation of being insulted by proxy.”
― Becky Albertalli, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

“Body acceptance means, as much as possible, approving of and loving your body, despite its “imperfections”, real or perceived. That means accepting that your body is fatter than some others, or thinner than some others, that your eyes are a little crooked, that you have a disability that makes walking difficult, that you have health concerns that you have to deal with — but that all of that doesn’t mean that you need to be ashamed of your body or try to change it. Body acceptance allows for the fact that there is a diversity of bodies in the world, and that there’s no wrong way to have one.”
― Golda Poretsky

“She ran her hands over her body as if to bid it good-bye. The hipbones rising from a shrunken stomach were razor-sharp. Would they be lost in a sea of fat? She counted her ribs bone by bone. Where would they go?”
― Steven Levenkron, The Best Little Girl in the World

“THE ORGANIC FOODS MYTH

A few decades ago, a woman tried to sue a butter company that had printed the word 'LITE' on its product's packaging. She claimed to have gained so much weight from eating the butter, even though it was labeled as being 'LITE'. In court, the lawyer representing the butter company simply held up the container of butter and said to the judge, "My client did not lie. The container is indeed 'light in weight'. The woman lost the case.

In a marketing class in college, we were assigned this case study to show us that 'puffery' is legal. This means that you can deceptively use words with double meanings to sell a product, even though they could mislead customers into thinking your words mean something different. I am using this example to touch upon the myth of organic foods. If I was a lawyer representing a company that had labeled its oranges as being organic, and a man was suing my client because he found out that the oranges were being sprayed with toxins, my defense opening statement would be very simple: "If it's not plastic or metallic, it's organic."

Most products labeled as being organic are not really organic. This is the truth. You pay premium prices for products you think are grown without chemicals, but most products are. If an apple is labeled as being organic, it could mean two things. Either the apple tree itself is free from chemicals, or just the soil. One or the other, but rarely both. The truth is, the word 'organic' can mean many things, and taking a farmer to court would be difficult if you found out his fruits were indeed sprayed with pesticides. After all, all organisms on earth are scientifically labeled as being organic, unless they are made of plastic or metal. The word 'organic' comes from the word 'organism', meaning something that is, or once was, living and breathing air, water and sunlight.

So, the next time you stroll through your local supermarket and see brown pears that are labeled as being organic, know that they could have been third-rate fare sourced from the last day of a weekend market, and have been re-labeled to be sold to a gullible crowd for a premium price. I have a friend who thinks that organic foods have to look beat up and deformed because the use of chemicals is what makes them look perfect and flawless. This is not true. Chemical-free foods can look perfect if grown in your backyard. If you go to jungles or forests untouched by man, you will see fruit and vegetables that look like they sprouted from trees from Heaven. So be cautious the next time you buy anything labeled as 'organic'. Unless you personally know the farmer or the company selling the products, don't trust what you read. You, me, and everything on land and sea are organic.


Suzy Kassem,
Truth Is Crying”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“(Referring to the piano's natural shape) Isn't it a shame when those big fat opera singers lean against the pianos and bend them?”
― Victor Borge

“Aside from the fact that they say it's unhealthy, my fat ain't never been no trouble. Mens always have loved me. My kids ain't never complained. Plus they's fat.”
― Alice Walker, You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down: Short Stories

“And there are loners in rural communities who, at the equinox, are said to don new garments and stroll down to the cities, where great beasts await them, fat and docile.”
― Louis Aragon

“I'm 190 pounds of rock hard muscle, underneath 40 pounds of sturdy protective fat.”
― John Swartzwelder, The Time Machine Did It

“Every fat person says it's not their fault, that they have gland trouble. You know which gland? The saliva gland. They can't push away from the table.”
― Jesse Ventura

“Rubenesque: the word for masterpiece curves. Screw you, unsalted rice cakes.”
― Christine Heppermann, Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty

“It’s an uncommonly dangerous thing to be left without any padding against the shafts of disease.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Camels can go many weeks without drinking anything at all. The notion that they cache water in their humps is pure myth—their humps are made of fat, and water is stored in their body tissues. While other mammals draw water from bloodstreams when faced with dehydration, leading to death by volume shock, camels tap the water in their tissues, keeping their blood volume stable. Though this reduces the camel’s bulk, they can lose up to a third of their body weight with no ill effects, which they can replace astonishingly quickly, as they are able to drink up to forty gallons in a single watering.” (pp.69-70)”
― Michael Benanav, Men of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold

“The word fat makes people uncomfortable. But when you see me, the first thing you notice is my body. And my body is fat. It’s like how I notice some girls have big boobs or shiny hair or knobby knees. Those things are okay to say. But the word fat, the one that best describes me, makes lips frown and cheeks lose their color. But that’s me. I’m fat. It’s not a cuss word. It’s not an insult. At least it’s not when I say it. So I always figure why not get it out of the way?”
― Julie Murphy, Dumplin'

“Adult obesity and overweight statistics have increased by about 50 percent since the Dietary Goals were announced. [by the federal government, in 1977] That bears repeating: a 50 percent increase in obesity/overweight correlated with a 10 percent decrease in fat content in the diet.”
― Larry McCleary MD, Feed Your Brain, Lose Your Belly

“He who makes fun of a short and fat man’s weight is much less cruel than he who makes fun of his height.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“After this, I can't resist. "Between you, me, and the rest of us, Ted, it's starting to show. You'd better work out, or getting fat off Daddy might be harder to hide.”
― Cindy Martinusen-Coloma, Caleb + Kate

“4/16/85: If I were thin, I’d never say “I am powerless over fudge.”
a) I can’t believe I actually ever said that. b) Which, of course, isn't to say that I do have any power over fudge. Particularly if it has nuts.”
― Camryn Manheim, Wake Up, I'm Fat!: A Memoir

“Every time I blink, all I can see are my flaws. My body in a fun-house mirror. Hips too wide. Thighs too big. And a head too small for the rest of me.”
― Julie Murphy, Dumplin'

“No matter how much I tell myself that the fat and the stretch marks don't matter, they do. Even if Bo, for whatever reason, doesn't care, I do.

Then there are days when I really give zero flying fucks, and I am totally satisfied with this body of mine. How can I be both of those people at once?”
― Julie Murphy, Dumplin'

“I don't exactly get to be moody or snappy when I don't feel like putting on a happy face, because when most people meet me, I'm already starting out with a deficit. Fat girls don't get that luxury.”
― Julie Murphy, Puddin'