Quotes from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“Recovery feels like shit. It didn't feel like I was doing something good; it felt like I was giving up. It feels like having to learn how to walk all over again.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“True nobility isn't about being better than anyone else; it's about being better than you used to be.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“Shame weighs a lot more than flesh and bone.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“And I somehow always felt less lonely when I was completely alone.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“Average. It was the worst, most disgusting word in the English language. Nothing meaningful or worthwhile ever came from that word.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“I don't know where this pressure came from. I can't blame my parents because it has always felt internal. Like any other parent, my mother celebrated the A grades and the less-than-A grades she felt there was no need to tell anybody about. But not acknowledging the effort that ended in a less than perfect result impacted me as a child. If I didn't win, then we wouldn't tell anyone that I had even competed to save us the embarrassment of acknowledging that someone else was better. Keeping the secret made me think that losing was something to be ashamed of, and that unless I was sure I was going to be the champion there was no point in trying. And there was certainly no point to just having fun.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“There's a fine line between being private and being ashamed.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“Most important, in order to find real happiness, you must learn to love yourself for the totality of who you are and not just what you look like.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“When it’s quiet in my head like this, that’s when the voice doesn’t need to tell me how pathetic I am. I know it in the deepest part of me. When it’s quiet like this, that’s when I truly hate myself.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“You don't have to be emaciated or vomiting to be suffering. All people who live their lives on a diet are suffering.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“Restriction generates yearning. You want what you cannot have.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“Even when I took first prize, topped the class, won the race, I never really won anything. I was merely avoiding the embarrassment of losing.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“I had to find a relationship with someone who could simultaneously make me grow up and keep me forever young.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“I highly recommend inviting the worst-case scenario into your life.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“in other words, accept yourself. love your body the way it is and feel grateful towards it. most importantly, in order to find real happiness, you must learn to love yourself for the totality of who you are and not just what you look like”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“Normal" isn't an adjective you wish to hear after putting that much effort into making sure it was spectacular.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“She'd tell me how she'd handle the backhanded compliment by smiling and pretending she was receiving a genuine compliment all the while ignoring their attempt to be insulting. After all, it's the way an insult is received that makes it an insult. You can't really give offense unless someone takes it.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“I finally understood that by being on a perpetual diet, I had practiced a "disordered" form of eating my whole life. I restricted when I was hungry and in need of nutrition and binged when I was so grotesquely full I couldn't be comfortable in any position by lying down. Diets that tell people what to eat or when to eat are the practices inbetween. And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“I wondered if that's what aging felt like. That desire and reality were dueling until the day you die, that nobody every got to a place of peace. I had always wanted to get old so I didn't have to care anymore, but I began to think that it would be best just to skip the getting older part and just die.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“The diet industry is making a lot of money selling us fad diets, nonfat foods full of chemicals, gym memberships, and pills while we lose a piece of our self-esteem every time we fail another diet or neglect to use the gym membership we could barely afford.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“I began to see myself as someone who can help others understand diversity rather than feeling like a social outcast. Ellen taught me to not care about other people's opinions. She taught me to be truthful. She taught me to be free. I began to live my life in love and complete acceptance. For the first time I had truly accepted myself.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“My decision not to eat animals anymore was paramount to my growth as a spiritual person. It made me aware of greed and made me more sensitive to cruelty. It made me feel like I was contributing to making the world better and that I was connected to everything around me. I felt like I was part of the whole by respecting every living thing rather than using it and destroying it by living unconsciously. Healing comes from love. And loving every living thing in turn helps you love yourself.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“Women in the postfeminist era, while supposedly strong and commanding and equal to men in every sense, looked weaker and smaller than ever before.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“I didn't understand that playing roles in any relationship is false and will inevitably lead to the relationship's collapse. No one can be any one thing all the time.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“I knew I wasn't attractive, and I was very happy about that. I didn't want to be attractive. I didn't want to attract. As long as no one wanted to be let in, I didn't have to shut anyone out.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“By starving myself into society’s beauty ideal, I had compromised my success, my independence, and my quality of life. Being overweight was really no different. It was just the “f— you” response to the same pressure. I was still responding to the pressure to comply to the fashion industry’s standards of beauty, just in the negative sense. I was still answering to their demands when really I shouldn’t have been listening to them at all. The images of stick-thin prepubescent girls never should have had power over me. I should’ve had my sights set on successful businesswomen and successful female artists, authors, and politicians to emulate. Instead I stupidly and pointlessly just wanted to be considered pretty. I squandered my brain and my talent to squeeze into a size 2 dress while my male counterparts went to work on making money, making policy, making a difference.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“The theory of objectivism claims that there are certain things that most
people in society can agree upon. A model is pretty. A lawyer is smart. Our society is based upon objectivism. It’s how we make rules and why we obey
them.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“I thought that if I accomplished enough, that somehow I would be let off the hook in the future. Like I didn’t have to keep striving and achieving because I had done that already, and it would add up to being enough.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“Playing roles in any relationship is false and will inevitably lead to the relationship's collapse. Noone can be any one thing all the time.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating. "Ordered" eating is the practice of eating when you are hungry and ceasing to eat when your brain sends the signal that your stomach is full. ... All people who live their lives on a diet are suffering. If you can accept your natural body weight and not force it to beneath your body's natural, healthy weight, then you can live your life free of dieting, of restriction, of feeling guilty every time you eat a slice of your kid's birthday cake.”
― Portia de Rossi, quote from Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

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