Susie Orbach

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

“The parents' job is to be there for their kids, not the other way round. Troubles between parents need to be talked through with friends and not visited on the children.”

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

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

“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?”

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

“In general, the Western body has become a global brand.”

“Our idea of a healthy body is so destabilised that insecure people have come to bolster their own bodies by deeming others - those with fat bodies - less worthy, less capable and less employable.”

“If I were afraid of wrinkles, I'd probably be hiding in a cupboard, because I have a lot of them.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“Celebrity culture is something that pains me.”

“Dare to be as physically robust and varied as you always were.”

“The truth is, we don't have an easy language for emotional life. That's why we have writers.”

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