Quotes About Defiance

She had wandered so far from the rules of propriety that she was making up new ones just to keep from sinking into the abyss.

The only way to win a rigged game, my darling, is to refuse to play. Then forge your own path. Rely on those who love you, those you love and trust yourself, and then muddle through.

Whoever tries to climb over our fence, we will try to climb over his house.

Why is the American black man so complacent about being trampled upon? Why doesn't the American black man fight to be a human being?

Shorty felt about the war the same way I and most ghetto Negroes did: Whitey owns everything. He wants us to go and bleed for him? Let him fight.

When you have nothing to lose, you have the freedom to thumb your nose at the rules set by others.

I clung to my tears, refusing to give them to him.

But he would give the Spainish no satisfaction. When they offered him a drink, he smashed the glass and ate the shards, preferring his own English blood to their sweet wine. He died soon after.

It went from fuck music to fuck-you music.

Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.

Nature gives all and takes all back. To her the man educated into humility says: 'Give what you will; take back what you will.' And he says this in no spirit of defiance, but simply as her loyal subject.

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catalina, patientia nostra?

For old age is respected only if it defends itself, maintains its rights, submits to no one, and rules over its domain until its last breath.

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? (When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?)

You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can't get me out of the story. I'm the plot, babe, and don't ever forget it.

I am not mad because I'm a woman... I'm mad because you're an asshole.

I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum (Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down)

I knelt to examine the floor, and there it was, in tiny writing, quite fresh it seemed, scratched with a pin or maybe just a fingernail, in the corner where the darkest shadow fell: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

You're dead, Cordelia.' No I'm not. 'Yes you are. You're dead. Lie down.

They have a certain gaiety to them, a power of invention, they don't care what people think. They have escaped, though what it is they've escaped from isn't clear to us. We think that their bizarre costumes, their verbal tics, are chosen, and that when the time comes we also will be free to choose. That's what I'm going to be like

If anyone else told her to lower her voice, Roz would know what to do: scream louder.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum [...] But what did it mean? I said. What?, he said. Oh, it meant 'Don't let the bastards grind you down'. I guess we thought we were pretty smart back then.

Their faces were the way women's faces are when they've been talking about you behind your back and they think you've heard: embarrassed, but also a little defiant, as if it were their right.