Quotes About Freedom

They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying of too much choice.

It's Paradise, but we can't get out of it. And anything you can't get out of is Hell.

We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.

I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.

I walk away from him. It's enormously pleasing to me, this walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will.

I intend to get out of here. It can't last forever. Others have thought such things, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn't last forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had.

We are a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.

I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.

I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely.

He needed to exist only in the present, without guilt, without expectation.

You want your decisions taken away from you so you won't be responsible for your own actions?

You are of course fully in control of what you choose to read

Gender roles suck, says Swift Fox. Then you should stop playing them, thinks Toby.

We immortals aren't misers - we don't hoard! Such things are pointless.

First maid: If I was a princess, with silver and gold, And loved by a hero, I'd never grow old: Oh, if a young hero came a-marrying me, I'd always be beautiful, happy, and free! Chorus: Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave - The water below is as dark as the grave, And maybe you'll sink in your little blue boat - It's hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat.

I made choices, and then, having made them, I had fewer choices.

Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge.

Forbidden things are open to the imagination.

At the time I thought, Why cry, you should be happy, you got out. But after all that's happened to me since that day, I understand why. You hold it in, whatever it is, until you can make it through the worst part. Then, once you're safe, you can cry all the tears you couldn't waste time crying before.

It's strange to remember how we used to think, as if everything were available to us, as if there were no contingencies, no boundaries; as if we were free to shape and reshape forever the everexpanding perimeters of our lives.

I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves.

I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight. Where I am is not a prison but a privilege...

As any bank robber can tell you (Nell would say), the best thing to do when running away is not to run. Just walk. Just stroll. A combination of ease and purposefulness is desirable. Then no one will notice you're running. In addition to which, don't carry heavy suitcases, or canvas bags full of money, or packsacks with body parts in them. Leave everything behind you except what's in your pockets. Lightest is best.

Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who is in love with either/or.