Quotes About Freedom

women on their own, making up their minds. They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word undone. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society of dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.

Yesterday was July the Fourth, which used to be Independence Day, before they abolished it.

She doesn't have to stay locked into place, into this mournful, drawn-out, low-grade misery. She has all kinds of choices and possibilities, and the only thing that's keeping her away from them is lack of willpower.

Moira had power now, she'd been set loose, she'd set herself loose. She was now a loose woman. I think we found this frightening.

Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. [...] Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.

I say, leave me alone, this is my winter, I will stay here if I choose

to quote George Orwell: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." And to quote him again: three words: Tell. The. Truth.

A bird of the air will carry the voice.

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, who was in love with either/or.

Right now I still have some choice in the matter. Not whether to die, but when and how. Isn't that freedom of a sort? Oh, and who to take down with me. I have made my list.

I am still a coward, still fearful; none of that has changed. But I turn and walk away from her. It's like stepping off a cliff, believing the air will hold you up. And it does. I see that I don't have to do what she says, and worse and better, I've never had to do what she says. I can do what I like.

if you want people to leave you alone you should act crazy.

But a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed. 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 Aunt Lydia said, who was in love with either/or.

Right now I still have some choice in the matter. Not whether to die, but when and how. Isn't that freedom of a sort?

So, the book is not 'anti-religion.' It is against the use of religion as a front for tyranny; which is a different thing altogether.

Arms up in the air now; let's pretend we're trees.

Lilies used to be a movie theatre, before. Students went there a lot; every spring they had a Humphrey Bogart festival, with Lauren Bacall or Katherine Hepburn, women on their own, making up their minds. They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word 'undone'. These women could not be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose.

Right now I have some choice in the matter. Not whether to die, but when and how. Isn't that a freedom of sort? Oh, and who to take down with me. I have made my list

But they only run away. Run isn't quite accurate. Their legs don't move. Their still-twitching feet don't touch the ground.

But then it came to me that who I really am is a person who doesn't need to know who he really is, in the usual sense. What does it mean, anyway - family background and so forth? People use it mostly as an excuse for their own snobbery, or else their failings. I'm free of the temptation, that's all. I'm free of the strings. Nothing ties me down.

They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives. We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

I'm not going to have a husband anyway, said Laura. I'm going to live by myself in the garage.

Writing poetry is a state of free float

I know why there is no glass, in front of the watercolour picture of blue irises, and why the window only opens partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof. It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.