Quotes About Independence

I can't see myself as a very domesticated person, with a suburb house and stuff like that.

We struck out on our own in suburbia with parents who actually helped us get where we needed to go.

I'm from the suburbs, really, so I actually didn't go to Montreal until I was, like, 19. I wasn't allowed to go to the city at night or really be in the scene with other producers. It was hard for my parents to understand what I was trying to do as an artist, but it didn't stop me. They eventually saw that it wasn't a joke.

My first husband dragged me out of London and made me live in the suburbs in Surrey - not where you want to be when you're 23.

Bandwagons roll through our lives. It's up to you whether you jump on them unquestioningly or jump on them to overturn them and subvert them.

Growing up in New York City, I'd flirted with the idea of driving, but between the subway and the sidewalks, I'd never needed to learn.

I was 14, and I left on my own. Living in a subway train, and police used to come in with a nightstick and say, 'You can't sleep here.' I'd get up and go across the street, get on another train, and go back the other way.

When my son first started to take the subway, my husband and I used to follow him to make sure he was all right, and then we had to stop following him and let him do it by himself.

I just hope I can still take the subway, honestly.

For me, New York is about anonymity; that's the draw. It's not at all about other people in my business being nearby. It's that I can get on the subway and eavesdrop on conversations that I would never have access to otherwise. That's why I stay. That's why I could never leave.

We're giving our freedoms away. The American experiment was about freedom. Freedom to be stupid, freedom to fail, freedom to succeed.

Go fail or succeed on your own merits, be your own man.

I want people to know where I come from. I think I have come really far from that, and I did it on my own. It's sort of the American dream to come from absolutely nothing and to succeed while still doing something that you love. Not compromising yourself in any way. I hope I'm making Jersey proud in that way.

There's a flipside to this; if you as an individual have the right to live on your own terms, you must have the right to both succeed and fail on them.

Commercial success still hasn't come to an artist that isn't signed to a record label. There are very few artists that can succeed without the help of a record label. The role of the record label is still required, it's still necessary.

The easiest thing in the world is to succeed. You can't help it if you follow the rules and play the game the best way you know how according to yourself, instead of according to the one next to you, or above you, or somewhere away from you.

When you go independent, if you fail, you're totally responsible for it. If you succeed, you're totally responsible for it. You are responsibly for who you are... and what you do and what you make.

My parents didn't want me to go into show business. They were afraid of what would happen if I didn't succeed. They wanted me to get married and have babies. I never saw marriage and family in my life.

Forgive but don't forget, girl keep your head up. And when he tells you you ain't nothing, don't believe him. And if he can't learn to love you, you should leave him.

He that falls by himself never cries.

As successive terminal moraines result form successive glaciations, so each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when it becomes a settled area the region still partakes of the frontier characteristics. Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from the influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines."

Creativity is an act of defiance.

Don't wait for someone to green light your project, build your own intersection.

Being alone doesn't necessarily mean that you're lonely.