Quotes About Independence

I knew - perhaps I hoped - that no form could ever contain Lila, and that sooner or later she would break everything again.

A woman's body does a thousand different things, toils, runs, studies, fantasizes, invents, wearies, and meanwhile the breasts enlarge, the lips of the sex swell, the flesh throbs with a round life that is yours, your life, and yet pushes elsewhere, draws away from you although it inhabits your belly, joyful and weighty, felt as a greedy impulse and yet repellent, like an insect's poison injected into a vein.

No one depended anymore on my care and, finally, even I was no longer a burden to myself.

She was struggling to find, from inside the cage in which she was enclosed, a way of being all her own, that was still obscure to her.

For the first time, I left Naples, left Campania. I discovered that I was afraid of everything: afraid of taking the wrong train, afraid of having to pee and not knowing where to do it, afraid that it would be night and I wouldn't be able to orient myself in an unfamiliar city, afraid of being robbed. I put all my money in my bra, as my mother did, and spent hours in a state of wary anxiety that coexisted seamlessly with a growing sense of liberation.

I behaved like that certainly to feel free from all the old bonds, to make it clear that I didn't care anymore about the judgment of relatives and friends, their values, their wanting me to be consistent with what they imagined themselves to be.

I gave a nervous laugh, then said, "Thanks, but at a certain point school is over." "Not for you: you're my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls.

Maybe I should erase Lila from myself like a drawing from the blackboard, I thought, for, I think, the first time. I felt fragile, exposed, I couldn't spend my time following her or discovering that she was following me, either way feeling diminished. I immediately went to find her.

Ecco Lila festeggiata dal rione, sembrava felice. Sorrideva elegante, cortese, mano nella mano di suo marito. Era bellissima. Su di lei, sulla sua andatura, avevo puntato da piccola, per sfuggire a mia madre. Avevo sbagliato. Lila era rimasta lì, vincolata in modo lampante a quel mondo, dal quale s'immaginava di aver tratto il meglio.

How difficult it is to find one's way , how difficult it is not to violate any of the incredibly detailed male regulations.

Two more years: then I'll get my diploma and I'm done.' 'No, don't ever stop: I'll give you the money, you should keep studying.' I gave a nervous laugh, then said, 'Thanks, but at a certain point school is over.' 'Not for you: you're my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls.' She got up, took off her underpants and bra, said, 'Come on, help me, otherwise I'll be late.

I would attach those of my revenge. I was not the woman who breaks into pieces under the blows of abandonment and absence, who goes mad, who dies. Only a few fragments had splintered off, for the rest I was well. I was whole, whole I would remain. To those who hurt me, I react giving back in kind. I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

I would have don't anything for her, on that morning of reconciliation: run away from home, leave the neighborhood, sleep in farmhouses, feed on roots, descend into the sewers through the grates, never turn back, not even if it was cold, not even if it rained.

Ahead of us were many hours when no one in our families would look for us. When I think of the pleasure of being free, I think of the start of that day, of coming out of the tunnel and finding ourselves on a road that went straight as far as the eye could see, the road that, according to what Rino had told Lila, if you got to the end arrived at the sea. I felt joyfully open to the unknown.

ci comunicava così un amore devotissimo, era evidente che gli piaceva ricordare a se stesso e agli altri la straordinarietà della sua donna, mentre mio marito non mi lodava mai, anzi mi riduceva a madre dei suoi figli, voleva che pur avendo studiato non fossi capace di pensiero autonomo, mi umiliava umiliando ciò che leggevo, ciò che m'interessava, ciò che dicevo, e pareva disposto ad amarmi solo a patto di dimostrare di continuo la mia nullità.

Falei de como tinha tentado desde sempre, a fim de me impor, ser um homem na inteligência - percebi-me inventada pelos homens, colonizada por sua imaginação

both had always known instinctively that the limbs of a man are not nourished when he fills the belly of another, and that those who would make you believe it should sooner or later get what they deserve.

get out of your mind that you can be a woman like me, all you'd succeed in being is what a woman is according to you men. You can copy me, make a portrait as precise as an artist, but my shit will always remain mine, and yours will be yours.

Eve can't, doesn't know how, doesn't have the material to be Eve outside of Adam. Her evil and her good are evil and good according to Adam. Eve is Adam as a woman. And the divine work was so successful that she herself, in herself, doesn't know what she is, she has pliable features, she doesn't possess her own language, she doesn't have a spirit or logic of her own, she loses her shape easily.

Finally she said something that I would never have had the courage to utter: "Look, Marcello tried in every possible way to buy me but no one is going to buy me.

Move on another plane in the name of one's own difference.

Pour moi, devenir, c'était devenir dans son sillage. Or, je devais recommencer à devenir mais pour moi, en tant qu'adulte, en dehors d'elle.

Sentía tristeza por el derroche, porque estaba obligada a marcharme, porque ella prefería la aventura de los zapatos a nuestras conversaciones, porque sabía ser independiente mientras que yo la necesitaba, porque tenía cosas propias en las que yo no podía entrar.

I had to accept myself outside of her.