A thin and sickly kid, I was pushed around and beaten up by bullies throughout my childhood, until I grew bigger than everybody and it stopped, I knew very well how they operate, and specifically the joy they take in scaring people. I’d stared them in the face so often that it wasn’t particularly challenging to do an impression.

I was an ugly kid. My mother breast-fed me through a straw.

I spent my childhood alone, overweight and ugly, angry at everything, and knowing nothing of a life beyond this sadness.

Everybody says I'm a bad kid, so I guess I am.

I was an ugly kid. When I was born, after the doctor cut the cord, he hung himself.

I was an ugly kid. I worked in a pet store. People kept asking how big I get.

I graduated second to last in my class. I was a fat kid. I was bullied by others.

a poor friendless child, apparently ten years old; but she seemed hunger bitten; and sufferings of that sort often make children look older than they are.

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

I was an unassuming, skinny little girl.

He was six and a half years old, but he was so malnourished that he looked like he was three and a half.

When I was growing up, particularly during puberty in my teen years, I was so miserable because I elicited so much teasing and meanness from my teenage cohorts.

I was always left out when I was a little girl. I was different from everyone…People were jealous but I didn’t realise. I had a reunion with some school friends recently and they said, 'We were mean to you because you got special attention because you were so beautiful.’ I said, 'I wasn’t beautiful. I was gawky.’ I never ever imagined myself to look nice.

I said goodbye to a skinny boy I had made friendship bracelets with morning and asked how old he was. I was shocked when he said he was almost fourteen. We were practically the same age, but he was so malnourished that he was barely the size of my eight-year old cousin. Most of the other boys and girls were so poorly fed that they had gray hair on top of their heads. It was a reminder for me of how blessed I am, and how even the biggest of smiles can't fill up someone's stomach.