Quotes from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“I start to see that I surround myself with broken people; more broken than me. Ah, yes, let me count your cracks. Let's see, one hundred, two... yes, you'll do nicely. A cracked companion makes me look more whole, gives me something outside myself to care for. When I'm with whole, healed people I feel my own cracks, the shatters, the insanities of dislocation in myself.”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“But the memories that hang heaviest are the easiest to recall. They hold in their creases the ability to change one's life, organically, forever. Even when you shake them out, they've left permanent wrinkles in the fabric of your soul.”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“Books are my friends, where it's okay to be silent, where you're not a freak if you don't want to get drunk, peel out in the parking lot, tip cows.”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“When I look in the fridge, I see groceries, but I don't see food. My stomach growls; but there is no appetite.

Appetite and hunger are different. Appetite is the mental prompting that kicks the auto-response into drive so you actually reach out, take the food, put it in your mouth, chew, and swallow. I learned this in my first psychology course. Eating isn't just a physical need; it starts in the mind, generating hunger, which then should trigger the body to ingest food. I have no sparks between these plugs.”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“But the memories that hang heaviest are the easiest to recall.”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“As long as I'm between home and the clinic I do all right. But out in the real world, I feel like prey. I slink around and can feel people looking at me. I feel their eyes boring into me. I feel what they're thinking: Watch her, she could go off anytime. But within the walls of my farmhouse, I climb out of the protective shell, my arms slowly rise like a phoenix, and I dance, wail, fly around the room and then collapse, crying, in front of my mirrors. I start to see in the mirror what it is I really look like, instead of what I was trained from the womb to see. I do not write about it. I do not talk about it. I do not know what I am doing. But just like a baby bird, I am blinking once-sealed eyes and unfolding damp wings. I cannot articulate the past. A part of me knows it's there, lurking, just behind what I can acknowledge, but it is not within sight. And I am keeping it that way. ”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“I am going to shrink and shrink until I am a dry fall leaf, complete with a translucent spine and brittle veins, blowing away in a stiff wind, up, up, up into a crisp blue sky.”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“But Dad, you were a grown man, you have got to take responsibility for what you did, too! I mean, you made me eat [snotty] Kleenex, Dad! For Christ's sake, you can't do that to a little girl! You have got to say you're sorry for the stuff you did as a grown man!'
'Well,' Dad snorts, 'I musta done something right! 'Cause you never left any snot rags lying around the house again, now, did you?”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“Life is not a problem to be solved but a work to be made, and that work may well utilize much raw material we would prefer to do without.”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“They say the truth hurts, but the only thing the truth hurts, are illusions.”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“Books are my friends, where it’s okay to be silent, where you’re not a freak if you don’t want to get drunk, peel out in a parking lot, tip cows.”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“Her voice trailed after any doctor who said no more tests could be done, stalked him down the corridor, sliced”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

“I am just a girl, a girl men touch without asking, a girl men disrobe without even seeing her tears.”
― quote from Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood

Popular quotes

“Read that!” commanded madame dramatically, and handed her a crumpled sheet of paper.
It contained a brief message in Juliana’s sprawling characters: “My dear Tante, pray do not be in a
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Juliana.”
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“the Massachusetts School for Idiotic Children”
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“I mean that success has come early. And that is dangerous. Always dangerous.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Mysterious Mr. Quin

“It seems like suffering's the only time we can see what's essential. If peace ever comes back I'm making a vow: I'll design myself special glasses. They'll block out whether people are fat or thin or beautiful or weird-looking, whether they have pimples or birthmarks or different coloured skin. They'll do everything suffering's done for us, but without the pain. I'm going to wear those glasses for the rest of my life.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Night Is for Hunting

“You wanted to feel disdain, to show it as you brought his order, because white people who liked Africa too much and those who liked Africa too little were the same—condescending.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, quote from The Thing Around Your Neck

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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