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Caroline Knapp

Caroline Knapp Books

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“In one of the largest surveys of its kind to date, nearly 30,000 women told researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine that they'd rather lose weight than attain any other goal, a figure that alone suggests just how complicated the issue of appetite can be for women. This is the primary female striving? The appetite to lose appetite? In fact, I suspect the opposite is true: that the primary, underlying striving among many women at the start of the millennium is the appetite for appetite: a longing to feel safe and secure enough to name one's true appetites and worthy and powerful enough to get them satisfied.”

WomenAppetite
Book:Appetites: Why Women Want
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“Being known. This, of course, is the goal, the agenda so carefully hidden it may be unknown even to the self. The cutter cuts to make the pain at her center visible. The anorexic starves to make manifest her hunger and vulnerability. The extremes announce, This is who I am, this is what I feel, this is what happens when I don't get what I need. In quadraphonic sound, they give voice to the most central human hunger, which is the desire to be recognized, to be known and loved because of, and in spite of, who you are; they give voice to the sorrow that takes root when that hunger is unsatisfied.”

WomenVoiceMental HealthHungerWomanVulnerabilityBeing Known
Book:Appetites: Why Women Want
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“I once heard a woman who'd lost her dog say that she felt as though a color were suddenly missing from her world: the dog had introduced to her field of vision some previously unavailable hue, and without the dog, that color was gone. That seemed to capture the experience of loving a dog with eminent simplicity. I'd amend it only slightly and say that if we are open to what they have to give us, dogs can introduce us to several colors, with names like wildness and nurturance and trust and joy.”

DogMemior
Author:Caroline Knapp
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“Cats are narcissistic. Their needs come before ours. They don't understand the word "No." They carry themselves with that aloof, arrogant sense of perpetual entitlement, they will jump up and insinuate themselves wherever they please--on your lap, on your newspaper, on your computer keyboard--and they really couldn't care less how their behavior affects the people in their lives. I've had boyfriends like this; who needs such behavior in a housepet?”

PeopleNeedsCarePleaseBehaviorComputerCatNewspapersArrogantPerpetualLapEntitlementNarcissisticKeyboardsAloofComputer Keyboards
Author:Caroline Knapp
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“The dog’s agenda is simple, fathomable, overt: I want. “I want to go out, come in, eat something, lie here, play with that, kiss you. There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges if a request is denied.”

IfsWantMindPlayLyingGamesSimpleDogKissingGuiltDenyComplicatedMotiveAgendasDeniedNegotiationRequestBargainsGrudgeGuessingDog LoverMind GamesSecond GuessingI Love My DogUlterior MotiveDog Best FriendGuilt Trip
Book:Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs
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“There's something about sober living and sober thinking, about facing long afternoons without the numbing distraction of anesthesia that disabuses you of the belief in the externals, shows you that strength and hope come not from circumstances or the acquisition of things, but from the simple accumulation of active experience, from gritting the teeth and checking the items off the list, one by one, even if it's painful and you're afraid.”

IfsThinkingLongShowsBeliefSimpleCircumstancesPainfulActiveListsTeethDistractionAfternoonSoberItemsAccumulationAcquisitionNumbingAnesthesiaStrength And Hope
Book:Drinking: A Love Story
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“Something is missing: that's as close as I can come to naming the sensation, an awareness of missed or thwarted connections, or of a great hollowness left where something lovely and solid used to be. ...There is something fundamentally insatiable about being human, as though we come into the world with a kind of built-in tension between the experience of being hungry, which is a condition of striving and yearning, and the experience of being fed, which may offer temporary satisfaction but always gives way to new strivings, new yearnings.”

WorldWayGivingHumansKindMayI CanUsedLeftConditionsAwarenessMissingOffersBuiltConnectionsStriveSatisfactionLovelyHungryUsed To BeTensionFedsSensationsTemporaryYearningBeing HumanInsatiableHollowness
Author:Caroline Knapp
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“I once heard a woman who had lost her dog say that she felt as though a color were suddenly missing from her world: the dog had introduced to her field of vision some previously unavailable hue and without a dog, that color was gone. That seemed to capture the experience of loving a dog with eminent simplicity. I'd amend it only slightly and say that if we are open to what they have to give, dogs can introduce us to several colors with names like wildness, nurturance, trust and joy.”

IfsWorldGivingJoyNamesLostFeltVisionGoneHeardDogMissingFieldsColorSimplicityCaptureIntroducingHueWildness
Author:Caroline Knapp
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“Trying to describe the process of becoming an alcoholic is like trying to describe air. It's too big and mysterious and pervasive to be defined. Alcohol is everywhere in your life, omnipresent, and you're both aware and unaware of it almost all the time, all you know is you'd die without it, and there is no simple reason why this happens, no single moment, no physiological event that pushes a heavy drinker across a concrete line into alcoholism. It's a slow, gradual, insidious, elusive becoming.”

KnowsTryingReasonMomentsBigsHappensDiesProcessLinesSimpleAirEventsBecomingHeavyAlcoholMysteriousDefinedReason WhyConcreteAlcoholismAlcoholicsElusiveSingle MomDrinkersInsidiousPhysiologicalHeavy Drinkers
Book:Drinking: A Love Story
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“Love—the desire to love and be loved, to hold and be held, to give love even if your experience as a recipient has been compromised or incomplete—is the constant on the continuum of hunger, it's what links the anorexic to the garden-variety dieter, it's the persistent pulse of need and yearning behind the reach for food, for sex, for something.”

IfsNeedsGivingHas BeensDesireSexBehindsGardenConstantHungerVarietyLinksYearningPersistentPulseIncompleteContinuumAnorexics
Author:Caroline Knapp
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“So it persists, for many of us, hunger channeled into some internal circuitry of longing, routed this way and that, emerging in a thousand different forms. The diet form, the romance form, the addiction form, the overriding hunger for this purchase or that job, this relationship or that one. Hunger may be insatiable by nature, it may be fathomless, but our will to fill it, our often blind tenacity in the face of it, can be extraordinary.”

WayMayDifferentJobsFacesRomanceFormThousandBlindLongingExtraordinaryAddictionHungerDietsInternalsPersistEmergingTenacityInsatiable
Author:Caroline Knapp
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“Dogs possess a quality that's rare among humans -- the ability to make you feel valued just by being you -- and it was something of a miracle to me to be on the receiving end of all that acceptance. The dog didn't care what I looked like, or what I did for a living, or what a train wreck of a life I'd led before I got her, or what we did from day to day. She just wanted to be with me, and that awareness gave me a singular sensation of delight.”

FeelsHumansEndsCareWantedAbilityQualityAwarenessDogAcceptanceMiracleTrainDelightSensationsReceivingDay To DayWrecksTrain Wrecks
Book:Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs
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“When you're starving or wrapped up in a cycle of binge-ing-and-purging, or sexually obsessed with (someone), it is very hard to think about anything else, very hard to see the larger picture of options that is your life, very hard to consider what else you might need or want or fear were you not so intently focused on one crushing passion. I sat in my room every night, with rare exceptions, for three and a half years.”

ThinkingWantNeedsYearsHardMightNightPassionThreeRoomsHalfFocusedObsessedSatCrushInjuryExceptionCyclesEvery NightStarvingSexuallyHalf A YearBingeSelf InjuryPurging
Author:Caroline Knapp
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“On the broad spectrum of solitude, I lean toward the extreme end: I work alone, as well as live alone, so I can pass an entire day without uttering so much as a hello to another human being. Sometimes a day's conversation consists of only five words, uttered at the local Starbucks: 'Large coffee with milk, please.”

HumansWellsI CanEndsSometimesHuman BeingsFivePleaseSolitudeConversationExtremesCoffeeLocalsBroadsMilkHelloSpectrumStarbucks
Author:Caroline Knapp
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