Quotes About Independence

You are of course fully in control of what you choose to read

But I was the daughter of a Naiad. Behave like water, I told myself. Don't try to oppose them. When they try to grasp you, slip through their fingers. Flow around them.

There were still newspapers, then. We used to read them in bed. It's French, he said. From m'aidez . Help Me.

I admired my mother in some ways, although things between us were never easy. She expected too much from me, I felt. She expected me to vindicate her life for her, and the choices she'd made. I didn't want to live my life on her terms. I didn't want to be the model offspring, the incarnation of her ideas. We used to fight about that. I am not your justification for existence, I said to her once.

I wasn't even sure I wanted a man in my life again; by that time I'd exhausted the notion that the answer to a man is another man, and I was out of breath.

The truth is I don't want him watching me while I eat. I don't want him to see my hunger. If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything. He

I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves.

Nobody has any authority on the fucks that other people give.

I have a fork and a spoon, but never a knife… as if I'm lacking manual skills or teeth. I have both, however. That's why I'm not allowed a knife.

A bachelor, a studio, those were the names for that kind of apartment. Separate entrance it would say in the ads, and that meant you could have sex, unobserved.

Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

Nobody is any authority of the fucks other people give.

Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a grey moth and let go. You could not believe I was more than your echo.

I don't want a man around, what use are they except for ten seconds' worth of half babies. A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.

I don't want her to be like me. Give in, go along, save her skin. That is what it comes down to. I want gallantry from her, swashbuckling, heroism, single-handed combat. Something I lack.

Nothing is ever settled," says Jocelyn. "Every day is different. Isn't it better to do something because you've decided to? Rather than because you have to?

I follow suit, said the lion, vacating his coat of arms and movie logos; and the eagle said, Get me off this flag.

There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. In the day of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.

She had her reasons. Not that they were ever the same as anybody else's reasons. She was completely ruthless in that way.

You're not my real parents, every child has thought. I'm not your real child. But with orphans, it's true. What freedom, to thumb your nose authentically!

Moira had power now, she'd been set loose, she'd set herself loose. She was now a loose woman. I think we found this frightening. Moira was like an elevator with open sides. She made us dizzy. Already we were losing the taste for freedom, already we were finding these walls secure. In the upper reaches of the atmosphere you'd come apart, you'd vaporize, there would be no pressure holding you together.

Per il Paradiso abbiamo bisogno di Te. L'Inferno ce lo possiamo fare da soli.

I don't want a man around, what use are they except for ten seconds' worth of half babies

She'd stepped out of sex as if out of a loose dress. Now she was brisk, decisive, no nonsense.