Fat is a way of saying no to powerlessness and self-denial.

Fat is a way of saying no to powerlessness and self-denial.

Beauty has been democratised. No longer the preserve of movie stars and models but available to all. But while the invitation to beauty is welcomed, it has become not so much an option as an imperative.

Being able to provoke a different point of view to the standard current ideological or political perspective as played out in conventional newspaper or radio reportage is what a public intellectual does. But it's not merely about being oppositional, because that's too negative.

Bodies are becoming our personal mission to tame, extend and perfect.

Boys, young men, men of all ages are being captivated by the new visual grammar which pushes men to pout and posture.

Celebrity culture is something that pains me.

Consumer society tantalises us. We then try within ourselves to control the needs that are being constantly stimulated.

Fat people are so rarely included in visual culture that fat is perceived as a blot on the landscape of sleek and slim.

I think it is one of the capacities of human beings, to create style.

I wish we could treat our bodies as the place we live from, rather than regard it as a place to be worked on, as though it were a disagreeable old kitchen in need of renovation and update.

I'd like to see much more understanding of emotional issues around hurt, abandonment, disappointment, longing, failure and shame, where they stem from and how they drive people and policies brought into public discourse.

I'm a therapist and that fascinates people because they think I carry secrets.

I'm the sort of person who likes to undo everything.

If you continually diet, you are putting your body in a quasi-famine situation. It slows your metabolism down and breaks the thermostat. Diets don't work. They don't help you understand why you're eating more than your body wanted in the first place.

In my mum's day, you needed to be beautiful for a very short time to catch your man. It didn't start at six and go on until you're 75, right?

Mothers unconsciously allow more latitude to sons, and open encouragement, and with daughters they treat them as they would treat themselves.

No one leaves a long-term relationship scot-free or without conflict.

No one likes to feel helpless. We find it psychologically unbearable and inside ourselves we may try to make ourselves part author of our misfortune rather than simply the recipient of it.

Not that it was Twiggy's fault, but the ubiquity of her image created a sense in young women that to be stylish meant to be skinny, flat-chested with an ingenue face and straight hair.

The analyst's psyche operates as a kind of... something to hold on to while somebody's going through therapy, if they're deconstructing their own psyche, if that's cracking up in some way, or dissolving.

The insistence that the commercialisation of the body is a fit subject for political discussion and intervention is well overdue.

There are so many young women who tip over into being a facsimile: they don't really inhabit their lives or their bodies.

There is no such thing as a neutral therapist.

Today, 'fat' has become not a description of size but a moral category tainted with criticism and contempt.

We accept there's an emotional aspect to life. But we're not very developed in our ways of understanding it.

When I was growing up, one or two girls were beautiful, but it was not an aspiration, right?

A wanted pregnancy as much as a dreaded pregnancy can play differently than all ones previous imaginings.

Fat is a way of saying no to powerlessness and self denial.

Fat is a way of saying ''no'' to powerlessness and self-denial.

Skinny is only one body type.

A wanted pregnancy as much as a dreaded pregnancy can play differently than all one's previous imaginings.

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

But this is a true saying among men: the gifts of enemies are no gifts and profitless.

I've done a lot of acting. I'm not saying I'm the greatest, but I'd love to act, I'd love to sing.

Let me start by saying, I'm utterly disgusted with the former members of the Dead Kennedys.

That other saying, I'm a part of all that I have met, I think that would have to begin with my wonderful parents back in Atlanta when I was a youngster five years old I was tongue tied.

But clearly at the same time you've got to get out there and connect with voters and actually respond to the needs, the frustrations, whatever problems their now saying are not being adequately solved.

The Kiss scene was attempted three times. The first was in a peculiar spot of the fort on the ground level. It felt forced to me, and I knew right away that, in spite of what others were saying, it was dead wrong.

I am saying pornography hurts anyone who reads it, garbage in, garbage out.

I was in the middle of a crossroads, which is a nice way of saying crisis, physically, emotionally and spiritually. You know the physical part. We just talked about it.

I am a genius. Then it amused me to keep saying so, but now it does not. I expected to be happy sometime. Now I know I shall never be.

A salute from this corner to President Bush for saying he was willing to investigate raising or eliminating the cap on salaries subject to the Social Security tax.

Love in the real world means saying you're sorry 10 times a day.

I had something I was trying to say and sometimes the message is an easy transmission and sometimes it's a difficult one but I love the power of saying it so I'm gonna do it whether it's hard or easy.

And, quite frankly, I fully expected to be charged with murder, because they weren't charging anybody. I did it in terms of, I felt like I was throwing down the gauntlet saying look, this is what happened. There's a family out there that needed to know what happened.

I know I stand visibly onstage, but my function is still unseen, because I rarely see the immediate results of what I am saying or doing or writing.

And before our current legislature adjourns, we intend to become the first state of full and true choice by saying to every low and middle-income Hoosier family, if you think a non-government school is the right one for your child, you're as entitled to that option as any wealthy family; here's a voucher, go sign up.

They give me the money, I give them the book. Having input into the adaptation would be kind of like selling a house and coming back three years later and saying, 'Paint it this color!'