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Quotes About Defiance

Cora thought he had a mean face, like a burl sprouting from a squat, sweaty trunk.
~ Colson Whitehead
The boy made a fist. He knew what he'd do if the man put his hand on his leg or tried to touch his thing. He'd vowed to sock Freddie Rich in the face many times and then stood paralyzed when the time came, but this day he felt he could actually do it. Drawing strength from the free world.
~ Colson Whitehead
The world had whispered its rules to him for his whole life and he refused to listen, hearing instead a higher order. The world continued to instruct: Do not love for they will disappear, do not trust for you will be betrayed, do not stand up for you will be swatted down. Still he heard those higher imperatives: Love and that love will be returned, trust in the righteous path and it will lead you to deliverance, fight and things will change.
~ Colson Whitehead
She wanted to tell him so mach, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create.
~ Colum McCann
Well, I'd say fuck too, if I were me. I'd say it backward and forward and around the block, fuck this and fuck that and fuck it all at once, twice, three times.
~ Colum McCann
If they ask you to stand still, you should dance.
~ Colum McCann
She wanted to tell him so much, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. Theorem, anti-theorem, corollary, anti-corollary. Underline it twice. It's all there in the numbers. Listen to your mother. Listen to me, Joshua. Look me in the eyes. I have something to tell you.
~ Colum McCann
The tightrope walk was an act of creation that seemed to stand in direct defiance to the act of destruction twenty-seven years later. About Let the Great World Spin
~ Colum McCann
They say ol' man Beach is crazy. And maybe he is. But he goes ahead anyways. He's the sort of man who knows the only things worth doing are the things might break your heart.
~ Colum McCann
One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.
~ Colum McCann
When you come into a rich man's house, the only place to split is in his face.
~ Colum McCann
So many people considered Rami a traitor, a lackey, a turncoat, but in the end he didn't care: he knew what he was doing, he knew he was getting under their skin, he was peeling it back, exposing the rawness. He was outnumbered, yes, but they would find a tipping point sometime, somewhere, along the way. It was inevitable. He had to keep telling the story. Repeating it again and again and again.
~ Colum McCann
She would not go meekly to that fate. If the rest of her life was meant to be miserable and forlorn, at least she could choose the path that would take her there.
~ Victoria Alexander
As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps —concentration camps, that is—and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable."17
~ Viktor E. Frankl
As I once put it: "As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps —concentration camps, that is—and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable."17
~ Viktor E. Frankl
As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.
~ Viktor Emil Frankl
Rickman wouldn't let something as trivial as death stop him.
~ Vince Flynn
Yield not to evils, but attack all the more boldly.
~ Virgil
Well, the day has come when a woman's weapons prove your daydreams wrong! Still, you carry no mean fame to your fathers' shades— just tell them this: You died by Camilla's spear!
~ Virgil
If I cannot prevail upon heaven, I will stir up hell!
~ Virgil
A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.
~ Virginia Woolf
Whenever you see a board up with Trespassers will be prosecuted, trespass at once.
~ Virginia Woolf
Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the center which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.
~ Virginia Woolf
And then she said to herself, brandishing her sword at life, nonsense.
~ Virginia Woolf