Top 60 Sarai Walker Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “In my real life I would have more friends, and dinner parties and overnight guests, but my life wasn’t real yet.”

— Sarai Walker

2. “I’m noticing a trend with the lesbian insults,” said Cheryl Crane-Murphy, shaking her head. “If I were a young thug, I would have gone with terrorist, but perhaps lesbian is more abhorrent.”

— Sarai Walker

3. “We can’t hide it or fake it. We’ll never fit society’s idea for how women should look and behave, but why is that a tragedy? We’re free to live how we want. It’s liberating, if you choose to see it that way.”

— Sarai Walker

4. “People had always insulted me by calling me fat, but they couldn’t hurt me that way, not anymore. I was fat, and if I no longer saw it as a bad thing, then the weapon they had used against me lost its power.”

— Sarai Walker

5. “The police and the “justice” system don’t take violence against women and girls seriously. If you’ve been assaulted or harassed, take the law into your own hands. Form vigilante groups with other girls. Sign up for self-defense classes, but don’t just use the skills defensively. Go on the offensive!”

— Sarai Walker

6. “The only way I could survive my life was to exist in a fog of denial.”

— Sarai Walker

7. “An early and important source of inspiration for Dietland was Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk’s novel and the film adaptation directed by David Fincher. I would like to think that Dietland would exist even if Fight Club hadn’t provided that initial spark of an idea, but I’ll never know.”

— Sarai Walker

8. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “I came here to lose a few pounds because of back pain. What kind of sick, self-loathing mindfuck is this?”

— Sarai Walker

9. “Because I’m fat, I know how horrible everyone is. If I looked like a normal woman, if I looked like you, then I’d never know how cruel and shallow people are. I see a different side of humanity.”

— Sarai Walker

10. “In Verena’s house there was never any mention of calories, there was no I shouldn’t eat this, I shouldn’t eat that. Plates were scraped clean, ooohs and ahhhs were abundant, women asked for more. No prayers were offered up to the diet gods: I’ll go to the gym later; I didn’t eat dinner last night. There was pleasure that didn’t have to be bargained for.”

— Sarai Walker

11. “The truth is a lonely place, but it doesn’t matter. I have a new family now. A better one.”

— Sarai Walker

12. “I want you to consider something, hon. What if it’s not possible for you to ever become thin? What if there is no one day? What if this is your real life right now? What if you’re already living it?”

— Sarai Walker

13. “Sometimes they would pose the question to me, not seeing or caring that when they said “Do I look fat?” they were really saying “Do I look like you?” It was assumed that no one wanted to look like me, not even me.”

— Sarai Walker

14. “This is your real life. You’re already living it.”

— Sarai Walker

15. “I was aware of the line that existed between us, the line that existed between me and most people. I had never liked to acknowledge the line, but there it was. Now I was too aware of it. Carmen.”

— Sarai Walker

16. “I’d imagined her for so long. In reality, I didn’t know her, but we lived in each other’s memories, each of us what the other needed us to be.”

— Sarai Walker

17. “I was wearing bright colors, refusing to apologize for my size. The dress made me feel defiant. For the first time, I didn’t mind taking up space.”

— Sarai Walker

18. “That required living in Dietland, which meant control, constriction – paralysis, even – but above all it meant obedience. I was tired of being obedient.”

— Sarai Walker

19. “She waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; “for it might end, you know,” said Alice to herself, “in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?” – Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

— Sarai Walker

20. “I looked at my body, the body that had kept me alive for nearly 30 years, without any serious health problems, the body that had taken me where I needed to go and protected me. I had never appreciated or loved the body that had done so much for me. I had thought of it as my enemy, as nothing more than a shell that enclosed my real self, but it wasn’t a shell. The body was me.”

— Sarai Walker

21. “Magazines are part of the global dissatisfaction industrial complex.”

— Sarai Walker

22. “I’m every American woman’s worst nightmare. It’s what they spend their lives fighting against, it’s why they diet and exercise and have plastic surgery – because they don’t want to look like me.”

— Sarai Walker

23. “Most children can’t imagine their mothers having a life before them, but for my sisters and me, it was the opposite. The wedding day was always the end of her story. We were the epilogue.”

— Sarai Walker

24. “The ensemble smelled of laundry detergent, that chemical floral scent not found in nature.”

— Sarai Walker

25. “I had never had a fat friend and I didn’t want one.”

— Sarai Walker

26. “What I wanted was for him to want me, for him to touch me. He held my hand sometimes. Once I fell asleep next to him on the sofa, my cheek resting against his white T-shirt, and he put his arm around me. I wanted more than that – I wanted for him to kiss me. I wanted his want.”

— Sarai Walker

27. “To tell the truth and undo some of the damage that Mama did, if that’s possible. My family made a fortune exploiting vulnerable people and now that fortune is mine. It’s ill gotten, of course, and it weighs on me. Sometimes at night when I think of it I can’t breathe.”

— Sarai Walker

28. “There was a wound somewhere deep inside of me. It never healed. But after I began to take “Y”, I could no longer feel it.”

— Sarai Walker

29. “If you eat healthy food and exercise, then it doesn’t really matter what size you are.”

— Sarai Walker

30. “If Kitty or any of the women on her staff were given the choice between looking like me and losing an arm or a kidney or even dying, they’d probably choose death or dismemberment.”

— Sarai Walker

31. “Marlowe said that the food combined with anonymity was like a narcotic.”

— Sarai Walker

32. “To survive my job I needed the callousness of an emergency room doctor.”

— Sarai Walker

33. “It’s a special power. I see past the mask to the real person underneath. I’m not living a lie like so many other women. I’m not a fool.” “Is.”

— Sarai Walker

34. “It’s easier to say that women like my mother are crazy. Then you don’t have to listen to them. And so maybe in a way she became crazy. Maybe she could communicate only by screaming.”

— Sarai Walker

35. “But I think I’ve finally come to realize that it’s my destiny to be one of the madwomen. One of the women who speaks the truth no matter how terrifying it might be. One of the women who stands apart from the crowd, focusing not on their angry faces and disapproval but looking above them at the sky, which is in a vibrant shade of hyacinth blue that matches the flowers growing in the garden.”

— Sarai Walker

36. “The furniture and walls were white, the linens were white, everything was white – I was living inside an aspirin.”

— Sarai Walker

37. “The men were alive when they were placed inside the brown canvas bags.”

— Sarai Walker

38. “That is the wealthy man’s secret... Always let other men fight your battles.”

— Sarai Walker

39. “On top of a cabinet, a large orchid was trapped under a bell jar.”

— Sarai Walker

40. “He was the only male on a staff of twenty-one white women; he was also Latino and gay, a triple hit of diversity. He told me once that he became irritable and moody at certain times of the month, prone to outbursts of unprovoked rage, caught up in the synchronized menstrual cycles of the women in the office and pulled along for the hormonal ride by mistake.”

— Sarai Walker

41. “I had never liked to call myself a woman. I knew I was one, but the word never sounded right when applied to me.”

— Sarai Walker

42. “I knew the relationship she’d had with Daphne was forbidden, but it hadn’t occurred to me that most women like Veronica married eventually. Daphne wouldn’t have, but Veronica, I could see, was different. She was more willing to wear a mask.”

— Sarai Walker

43. “Women are raised to be accommodating, so I suppose a woman who draws clear lines that others are not allowed to cross becomes remarkable for that fact alone.”

— Sarai Walker

44. “You think I’m part of their club? I’m passing. Passing for thin.”

— Sarai Walker

45. “The mind of a soldier wasn’t the mind of a mother, but she wasn’t a mother anymore.”

— Sarai Walker

46. “The mothers of Kitty’s readers often chose men over their daughters, the desire for romance overwhelming the need to protect their child.”

— Sarai Walker

47. “Everything!” I said, snapping at her. “She won’t be alone all the time, she won’t spend all of her time in this apartment, she’ll dress in pretty clothes, she’ll travel, she’ll have a job that she likes, she’ll host dinner parties.” This last comment must have sounded silly, but I had always wanted to host dinner parties, with candles stuck into empty wine bottles, the orange and red wax dripping down.”

— Sarai Walker

48. “This story is jagged, could cut a deep wound. It isn’t a story I can tell with a thread and a needle, stitching in clean lines. It’s shards or nothing.”

— Sarai Walker

49. “Men’s body parts were scattered around the city: men’s lips, torsos, legs, and buttocks. Pieces of men would flash by on the sides of buses, enough to brighten any girl’s day.”

— Sarai Walker

50. “You’ve imagined yourself as Alicia for so long that you don’t give Plum a chance to be everything she can be.” “I’ve been Plum my whole life. She’s had plenty of chances.” I thought about the makeover. Shopping for cosmetics and new shoes, I supposed that’s what she had in mind. I could handle that. “And the fourth task?” “A week of blind dates.” An invisible hand punched me in the gut. “Verena –.”

— Sarai Walker