Quotes About Freedom

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.

If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.

What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?

It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.

If you surrender to the wind you can ride it.

How come it can't fly no better than a chicken?' Milkman asked. Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.' The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.

Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

How come it can't fly no better than a chicken? Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.

It was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both. In sorting it all out, he hit on the notion that if one day a year were devoted to it, everybody could get it out of the way and the rest of the year would be safe and free. In this manner he instituted National Suicide Day.

Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.

Look to yourself. You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you. Seek your own land. You young and a woman and there's serious limitation in both, but you are a person too. Don't let Lenore or some trifling boyfriend and certainly no devil doctor decide who you are. That's slavery. Somewhere inside you is that free person I'm talking about. Locate her and let her do some good in the world.

If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.

Don't let anybody, anybody convince you this is the way the world is and therefore must be. It must be the way it ought to be.

You got a life? Live it! Live the motherfuckin life!

Beloved, she my daughter. She mine. See. She come back to me of her own free will and I don't have to explain a thing.

I welcomed the circling sharks but they avoided me as if knowing I preferred their teeth to the chains around my neck my waist my ankles

Bit by bit, at 124 and in the Clearing, along with others, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

Wicked People Love Wickedly, Violent People Love Violently, Weak People Love Weakly, Stupid People Love Stupidly, But The Love Of A Free Man Is Never Safe...

Well, feel this, why don't you? Feel how it feels to have a bed to sleep in and somebody there not worrying you to death about what you got to do each day to deserve it. Feel how that feels. And if that don't get it, feel how it feels to be a colored woman roaming the roads with anything God made liable to jump on you. Feel that.

Without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees—he leaped. For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the wind, you could ride it.

God take what He would, she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn't mean a thing.

When I woke up I reminded myself that freedom is never free. You have to fight for it. Work for it and make sure you are able to handle it. Now