Imperfect Mortals Quotes

“And in just ten seconds of giving our souls to each other, we knew, if not forever, at least tonight we would live as though it was the last day to love.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“The scars of my anorexia, perfectly hand-drawn in red, immaculately colouring one-fourth of my left arm. It had hurt like hell, but it still wasn’t as painful as the last two years of my life. The mental, excruciating pain within the depths of my brain had managed to surpass the aching pain of the pointed edge of the object I’d used on my arm. I’d thought that overshadowing the pain I already felt with a much harsher form and intensity would make the emotional pain disappear.
I was wrong. The latter pain always remains stronger; that is something I realized.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“It was haunting to be entangled in this obnoxious cycle. I want to get out of this viciousness. That pizza is staring at me. I think that slice of pie might hurt me. Thirty-five calories for an Oreo cookie; 75caloriesfor a slice of bread; 285 for a slice of pizza; 350for a plate of pasta. You know, maybe I’ll just study the digits of eggs, wheat, vegetables, apples, oranges. Ugh! Stop. It all hurts so much. That’s it. Make it stop. Please, I beg you. Just make it stop.
I felt like the walking and living encyclopedia of numbers and digits.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“The better question is: Do you want to recover?”
I didn’t have an answer; I wasn’t sure. Recovery sounded great on paper and in the calm and casual way he said it. But why did the very thought of recovery seem like the most excruciating and difficult thing? What if I started hating myself after a few months of making conscious efforts to be a healthy person again? What if recovery meant being fat all over again? What if I wasn’t ready?
“I’m not sure,” I said.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“That was when I realized I had no control over my actions anymore. All I knew was that though no one knew what hell felt like, my life had become a version of fire and brimstone. My restrictive anorexia was completely and inexorably interfering with my ability to live like a normal human being.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“He helped me sit up on my bed and tried to force-feed me glucose dissolved in water and a biscuit he’d grabbed from my roommate’s bedside. But I spat it right out, still thinking about calories and numbers.
“That’s enough, Amira. I’m literally trying to feed you water. It’s not going to hurt you!” he screamed.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“My days began and ended with my fear of food. Even though all that was left of me was skin and bones, the only thing I could think was, Still not thin enough!”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Soon, everyone around me had come to terms with my peculiar eating habits and started accepting me for who I was. It felt peculiar at first, but when someone said things like, “I wish I could resist eating all that,” in whatever parallel universe I existed, I felt powerful.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“And you my dear, will always be my aftermath of loss and love”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“I wanted to be normal again. I wanted to be genuinely happy again and not just pretend. I didn’t want distorted mirror images to destroy and define my life any longer. I wished to breathe in the customary air, instead of the suffocating one people like me had accustomed themselves to breathe. I just wanted to break through these metal rods that I’d been caged behind for the last two years of my life. I wanted to feel plain, simple, genuine contentment again. I wanted to; I needed to.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Everything was going perfectly well until Dr. Roy paused for a long minute to stare at me with utter shock and revelation.
I knew I had messed up. I should have just worn my black, full-sleeved dress instead. But again, I thought that the scars had lightened to an unnoticeable extent. But I guess I was wrong. That was when I realized that scars never went away entirely.
“Did you do that to yourself?” he asked.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“It wasn’t like I had started magically eating two entire meals in a day. I would still survive the day with black coffee and apples, but it just seemed like I’d taken one step heavenwards. The mirror felt a little less frightening with each passing day. It was refreshing to talk to someone who was fully convinced that my eating disorder was as real as I thought.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“I remembered all those times when the people around me believed that I had spent the last two years of my life faking an eating disorder for the sole purpose of attention. For that reason, every day I would read a thousand articles and watch a hundred videos on real survivors who’d battled anorexia. Then I would question myself. My ribs aren’t popping out of my stomach, so maybe it’s actually just in my mind. Then after a few days of surviving on nothing at all, I would look at myself, see my ribs popping out and ask myself, Am I now?”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“My life was now determined by the number on the scale or the digits behind food containers. But I was completely okay with it as long as my 24” waist size never felt even a tad tighter. But if it ever did, hell would freeze over, resulting in 21-day fasts until I felt thin enough.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Days and weeks passed by with changes in seasons and the phases of the moon. But the one thing that remained unmoved and constant was something I told myself every single day, "Amira Kashyap, you are fat!”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“I love you, Ayesha. What would I do without you?" Zorawar said in the platonic way he'd always told her that he loved her.

"I love you too, Zorawar. Always have always will." she said ambiguously.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“When you're young, everything seems like the end of the world.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“You left me as quickly as you told me you loved me, all in one breath.
When I told you I was hard to love, you asked me not to be scared; I believed you.
Because even after you swore you weren’t like the others, I didn’t realise you meant you were worse.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Because even after you swore you weren’t like the other, I didn’t realise you meant you were worse.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“But is the timing of a thing supposed to be everything?
I do, I do want all my ends and beginnings to be with you.
But are you supposed to be one brick in the wall of my life and not the brick that completes it?
Are you supposed to be one chapter in my book and the insignificant corner of my jigsaw puzzle?
Did you and I collapse into each other for this one big pool of tears?
Or is there more to it?
I still think we could make the world a better place together and be strong for each other, and go till the ends of the world with each other.
But at what cost?
Please don't say at the cost of our peace.
Because that's when you will give up and that's when you'll break my heart.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Maybe I'd spent way too long fighting for love, not realizing that all this while, I was fighting my fear of not wanting to lose someone I'd known forever.
Maybe Zara and I too were always meant to be unfinished business.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“But although my body constantly reminded me that it was starving, the voices inside my mind never gave me permission to satisfy my hunger. At times, I would get affected when people passed statements like, “Why can’t you just eat?”
However, I convinced myself that the only person who could understand anorexia was someone who had been through the eating disorder. I chose to remain quiet.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“You and I will always be unfinished business.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“What you're looking for is on the other side of fear.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“When I told him, 'I break everything I touch', he said he would break his own heart and use those pieces to fix mine. Is this too good to be true? Is this just my fantasy of him? or is this actually real?”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“It was as though the throttling nature of the cloth against her mouth wanted to sentence her to a lifetime of silence.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“No one cares about your happiness, Udita. We’re just supposed to serve as wombs for patriarchy’s narcissistic desire for an endless line up of sons.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“At exactly 11.11pm, a baby took its first breath in the Jhareja household. By 11.13 pm, the entire family’s faces bore frowns, all their hopes shattered into a million pieces. An atmosphere of gloom and melancholy settled over the entire household. The sombre and bleak looks on their faces seemed so distasteful that it seemed like they were in more agony than the time the head of the family had passed away.

Udita’s daughter, Kairavi had been born.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Udita lay silently on her bed with Kairavi clenched to her heart. She looked at the bowl full of honey kept on the side table next to her. Then she looked at the unopened box of ‘pedas’ in her husband’s hands. Finally, she looked at her beautiful angel, her moon baby with a little smile on her dimpled cheek, oblivious to how she silently lay amidst her own family of misanthropes.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“The only question I ask myself is: did we teach each other the meaning of love for ourselves or someone else?”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories