Quotes About Independence

He wanted Rachel to be his wife, his lover, the centre of his whole world; a girlfriend implied that he would see her from time to time, that she would have some kind of independent existence away from him, and he didn't want that at all.

that night taught me one of life's most useful lessons, one of the only pieces of advice I have to offer to younger generations: YOU'RE ALLOWED TO WALK OUT!

This, really, is the bottom line, the chief attraction of the opposite sex for all of us, old and young, men and women: we need someone to save us from the sympathetic smiles in the Sunday-night cinema queue, someone who can stop us from falling down into the pit where the permanently single live with their mums and dads. I'm not going back there again; I'd rather stay in for the rest of my life than attract that kind of attention.

See, I've always been afraid of marriage because of, you know, ball and chain, I want my freedom, all that. But when I was thinking about that stupid girl I suddenly saw it was the opposite: that if you got married to someone you know you love, and you sort yourself out, it frees you up for other things.

Sitting at the table with the kids, and being told off like a kid, has liberated me; my disenfranchisement has empowered me.

Taking your husband's name when you became his wife was one thing. Taking your town's name when you became its beauty queen was something else again.

She didn't want her father to die. She would mourn him. She owed him . . . not everything, exactly, because there were lots of things she'd had to obtain for herself, but enough. If, however, the choice was between a brief good-bye and a new life, then it was no choice at all.

sod-that-for-a-lark floating

I like to know that there are big places without windows where no one gives a shit. You need confidence to go into small places with regular customers—small bookshops and small music shops and small restaurants and cafés. I'm happiest in the Virgin Megastore and Borders and Starbucks and PizzaExpress, where no one gives a shit, and no one knows who you are.

He didn't want to put up with things as they were, but the other choice meant that he'd have to be his own mother, and how could you be your own mother when you were only twelve?

I didn't want people feeling sorry for me, you see. I wanted them to help, even if helping meant saying that they wouldn't help

Before 1521 we could have been anything and everything not Filipino; after 1565 we can be nothing but Filipino.

Todo príncipe prudente ha desechado las tropas auxiliares y refugiado en las propias; y ha preferido perder con las suyas que ganar con las otras

Dogs own space and cats own time.

I don't belong to anyone ! I'm not a thing, to be kept or ordered or driven to such despair that I open my own veins. Look at me, Aoife. Look at me! I'm a woman.

No one but her uncle knew that under Fursey's tutelage she could make her letters or that she understood Latin if it was spoken slowly—and even he seemed content to let her learn privately. Until she knew how these newcomers thought and what they wanted, she would keep it that way, keep her dice rattling in her cup. It was foolish to throw before all bets were on the table.

One day I'll give birth to a tiny baby girl and when she's born she'll scream and I'll tell her to never stop I will kiss her before I lay her down at night and will tell her a story so she knows how it is and how it must be for her to survive I'll tell her to set things on fire and keep them burning I'll teach her that fire will not consume her that she must use it

Perhaps that is what it means to be a father-to teach your child to live without you.

I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. And then I thought, perhaps that is what it means to be a [parent] - to teach your child to live without you.

He died alone because he was too embarrassed to phone anyone.

I've always liked the feeling of traveling light; there is something in me that wants to feel I could leave wherever I am, at any time, without any effort. The idea of being weighed down made me uneasy, as if I lived on the surface of a frozen lake and each new trapping of domestic life - a pot, a chair, a lamp - threatened to be the thing that sent me through the ice.

There was no one to call me to bed, no one to demand that the rhythms of my life operate in a duet.

The way Misha tells it, he drove like a blind man, giving the car almost full independence to feel its way along, bumping off things, only giving the wheel a spin with the tips of this fingers when the situation verged on life threatening.

left to my own devices, I'm content to wake myself with a fart.