Quotes About Independence

She had never lived alone before, and at first found it strange, but gradually had learned to accept it as a blessing and to indulge herself in all sorts of reprehensible ways, like getting up when she felt like it, scratching herself if she itched, sitting up until two in the morning to listen to a concert.

I do resent that when you're in the most cool, powerful time of your life, which is your 40s, you're put out to pasture. I think women are so much cooler when they're older. So it's a drag that we're not allowed to age.

Because I was starting out in my 20's. I wanted to do it on my own. I didn't want to use my dad or have people say I was using him.

Laughter is the first evidence of freedom.

It's our money, and we're free to spend it any way we please.

They... threw themselves into the interests of the rest, but each plowed his or her own furrow. Their thoughts, their little passions and hopes and desires, all ran along separate lines. Family life is like this — animated, but collateral.

The thing was not to get to know any of them, if possible. Once you know your neighbours, you are no longer free, you are all tangled up, you have to stop and speak when you are out and you never feel safe when you are in.

I came out of the Soviet Union no longer a communist, because I believed in personal freedom.

Living is fighting for life, and when anyone does not know this fact, someone else is doing his fighting for him.

The real truth is, I just want to keep the voice of dissent alive in all of our elections. I don't really want to hang out with politicians. I'd rather go straight to hell, and not collect $200.

The only thing I've ever wanted for my kids is that they're happy, and that they're out of the house. And I'll tell you what, happy ain't even that important.

The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.

When it comes time to do your own life, you either perpetuate your childhood or you stand on it and finally kick it out from under.

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! Ain't I a woman?18

He rose to his feet in one fluid move, the better to look down at me. "You don't know me, princess. Some people have reasons for doing things, and don't just go wherever they're told or drift whichever way they're pushed.

I didn't say I was going to find the Mad Monk." "But you will," he said, placing his worn and stained Stetson on his head. "You've got that look about you. "What look is that?" I asked, tired of his family maligning mine. "A Goodnight look?" "A responsible one." He adjusted his hat, in a motion I'd seen Ben make a dozen times that day, right before he drove home his point. "Like you're the girl who takes care of things. So take care of it, dammit.

More than once in the orphanage, I'd been asked if I wanted to look different. Truth is, I never did. I knew who I was when I looked into the mirror, my mother's daughter.

Oh, he'd be back all right! Giving her the last laugh before she moved out. And that was why she hadn't moved out yet. Just knowing she could, anytime she wanted to, made all the difference, of course. She'd just wait for him to succumb one more time, that was all. One more time -- proving to him that he still wanted her before she disappeared out of his life for good.

but he was pleasantly surprised by Svetlana's tranquillity. She later said, "I had been trained not to make decisions for myself, to wait and to be patient, above all to remain well-mannered.

My husband's death changed my nature. I feel it impossible to be silent and tolerant anymore. It is impossible to be always a slave.

Svetlana did not know how to be alone. Alone, she felt totally exposed. She thought she would be safe if only she could entwine her life in another, but then, once she had achieved this, she would feel suffocated, a pattern that would take her decades to break, if she ever succeeded.

Esca tossed the slender papyrus roll onto the cot, and set his own hands over Marcus's. "I have not served the Centurion because I was his slave," he said, dropping unconsciously into the speech of his own people. "I have served Marcus, and it was not slave-service...my stomach will be glad when we start on this hunting trail.

1. Big Bad Ben by Rosemary Wells 2/2/22 read on my own

I am afraid of reduction. After a lifetime's independence- yes, selfish independence- I am terrified of being reduced to childhood once more, to helplessness, to seas of confusion from which the cruel lucid intervals poke up like rock shoals. I don't want to sit in my chair and be fed, much less do I want to be handed over to medical professionals.