Quotes About Defiance

I know she's looking at me, the lopsided mouth smiling a little, the face closed and defiant. There is the same shame, the sick feeling in my body, the same knowledge of my own wrongness, awkwardness, weakness; the same wish to be loved; the same loneliness; the same fear. But these are not my own emotions any more. They are Cordelia's; as they always were.

then she smiled and said that we were precious flowers, and who ever heard of a rebellious flower?

Don't let the bastards grind you down. I repeat this to myself but it conveys nothing. You might as well say, Don't let there be air; or, Don't be.

It's an event, a small defiance of rule, so small as to be undetectable, but such moments are the rewards I hold out for myself, like the candy I hoarded, as a child, at the back of a drawer. Such moments are possibilities, tiny peepholes.

I take back what you have stolen, and in your languages I announce I am now nameless. My true name is a growl.

I can see this idea gathering in Cordelia as well. Maybe she's gone too far, hit, finally, some core of resistance in me. If I refuse to do what she says this time, who knows where my defiance will end?

They were reducing us to animals—to penned-up animals—to our animal nature. They were rubbing our noses in that nature. We were to consider ourselves subhuman.

It was still with them, the century-old futility of trying to protect what was theirs while watching it being taken away. It clung to her people like a stain that couldn't be removed.

Fighting back with joy rarely makes sense.

Supposed I don't want to redeem myself? Why should I fight to uphold the system that cast me out? I shall take pleasure in seeing it smashed.

Some day I'm going to do and say everything I want to do and say, and if people don't like it I don't care.

Madam, you flatter yourself. I do not want to marry you or anyone else. I am not a marrying man. - Rhett Butler

What a white livered, cowardly little bitch you are.

They burned you," she [Scarlett] thought, "and they laid you flat. But they didn't lick you. They couldn't lick you. You'll grow back just as big and sassy as you used to be!

Oh, I don't care! I don't care what they say!" she whispered, as a sweet madness swept over her.

She'd make them sorry. She'd show them. She didn't quite see how she'd show them, but she'd do it all the same. She'd hurt them worse than they hurt her.

Ah's sceered of cows, Miss Scarlett. Ah ain' nebber had nuthin' ter do wid cows. Ah ain' no yard nigger. Ah's a house nigger." "You're a fool nigger, and the worst day's work Pa ever did was to buy you," said Scarlett slowly, too tired for anger. "And if I ever get the use of my arm again, I'll wear this whip out on you.

She was permitting herself the luxury she had often dreamed-of doing exactly what she pleased and telling people who didn't like it to go to hell. To her had come that pleasant intoxication peculiar to those whose lives are a deliberate slap in the fact of organized society-the gambler, the confidence man, the polite adventuress, all those who succeed by their wits.

Action must be taken at once; there is no time to be lost; we shall yet see the oppressors' yoke broken and the fragments scattered on the ground.

The time for running has come to an end. You tell them white folk in Mississippi that all the scared niggers are dead!

He who is silent and bows his head dies every time he does so. He who speaks aloud and walks with his head held high dies only once.

I'll probably die by the time I reach 25. But I'll have lived the way I wanted to.

I don't mind growing old. If I have to go before my time, this is how I'll go-- cigarette in one hand, glass of scotch in the other.

You know what happened the last time a group of people said, 'Screw it, we don't care what you think'? They got hung as witches.