Quotes About Independence

Did you see how she stood and faced them down? I demanded with pride. A most excellent bitch, Nighteyes agreed.

You leave so much behind to do this," I said awkward, thinking of his tools, his half-finished puppets, even the plants growing inside by the window. Despite myself, I felt responsabile for it. Perhaps it was because I was glad that I was not going on alone. He glanced over me and shrugged. "I take myself with me. That's all I truly need, or own.

A boy is a man when he proves himself to be one, but a girl is a woman when she desires to be one.

And like a child, I'd be testing the people who loved me, pulling away from them almost for the sole reason of seeing if anyone would come after me.

I don't want to have these burdens. But I can't bear to turn them over to anyone else, either. Because, despite all the work, I like being in control of my own life.

All I ever wanted to do was live my own life. And I'm having damn little success at that." p. 250: Brashen Trell and Amber

Love can exist without need

It was as if I had been following a narrow trail, and had suddenly realized that at any time I could leave it and strike out cross-country.

There is a place where all time is now, and the choices are simple and always your own. Wolves have no Kings.

She had called herself a whore. That was a man's word, a shame-word flung at a woman. But she did not seem ashamed. She wielded the word like a sword, slicing away all his preconceptions of who she was. She had earned her living by her sex, and she did not seem to regret it.

Take all self-determination from a man's life, and all that is left for him to do is complain.

Isolation was better than shame. I would continue on my own. This was my fight and no one else

As much as I had always longed to be freed of my duties and obligations, being released from such bonds was as much a severing as an emancipation.

Wait for you? Not likely! I've always had to run ahead of you and show you the way.

He has had his wish. He will not bow his head.

Nor do I need your pity. I accept my current fortune. I've seen my situation change before, and I will see it change again. I don't need you to change it.

When had it become so ingrained in her to apologize whenever she wanted something for herself?

No man becomes a pirate because he wants to be ruled by another.

He said nothing to any of them, and they knew better than to speak to the captain when he stood thus, deep in thought. He had a problem. He'd settle it without help from any of them. That was what captains did.

No. Not tonight. Not by impulse, not without thought, No. It did not matter what others did. She had to think for herself about such things.

Men it is who think they can rule others' lives, but have no bonds to them. Do you think that to bond or not to bond is for you alone to decide? My heart is my own. I give it where I will. I will not give it to one who thrusts me aside.

As we shouldered our packs and set off, I reflected bitterly that I had walked away from people I had known and cared about to avoid the very situation I was now in with comparative strangers. I wondered if there was any way to live amongst people and refuse to be harnessed by their expectations

I know you think it slatternly, the way I am with men. But once you have been forced, it is … different. Ever after. I say to myself, well, I know that it can happen to me at any time. So this way, at least I decide with whom and when. There will never be children for me, and hence there will never be a permanent man. So why should not I take my pick of what I can have?

She is, Althea thought uneasily, what I pretend to be: a woman who does not let her sex deter her from living as she pleases. It wasn't fair. Jek had grown up in the Six Duchies, and claimed this equality as her birthright. Consequently, men usually ceded it to her.