Quotes About Independence

There is so much obligatory generosity to being a good mother, a good wife, a good friend. Solitude is an acceptable form of selfishness.

For so long I'd thought about myself as a girl who'd walked away from her mother's life that it would be a long time before I would start to think about the other part of the bargain, how easily she'd let me go.

Nora had discovered that by herself was a condition she really liked

I was good with being alone, always liked it, but there's something about doing a job alone that you've always done with someone else that just doesn't feel right. Maybe it's like making Christmas cookies by yourself. There's nothing wrong with it in theory, but you're really supposed to be doing it with other people, and not just any other people.

But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.

I prize my downtime, count on it as a writer, a parent, a person. Sometimes I think of Woody Allen's remark about masturbation, that it is sex with someone he loves. I feel as though being alone is hanging out with someone I like.

It would take a helluva man to replace no man at all.

I don't even have a dog. I tell people I'm allergic so they won't think less of me. Instead I have a cat, the pet that ranks just above a throw pillow in terms of responsibility required.

Being a parent is not transactional. We do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward: We are good parents, not so they will be loving enough to stay with us, but so they will be strong enough to leave us.

My husband and I have together created three children, but we have separate finances, and that's the way I like it.

was possible to love and care for a man and still have at your core a strength so great that you never even needed to put it on display.

It was just that she could not imagine what it would be like to share her life. She could not imagine not being able to switch on the reading lamp next to her bed if she could not sleep at midnight, or having to ask someone else's opinion on dinner plans or weekend guests. She had had her ways from the time she was young, and she had never had to change them.

I sit on the sidewalk with a sign. Maybe you think its humiliating, but it's only humiliating if I feel humiliated, and I don't. What did Eleanor Roosevelt say? 'No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

I would not send a poor girl into the world, unarmed against her foes, and ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself.

Then, you must fall each into your proper place. You'll do your business, and she, if she's worthy of you, will do hers; but it's your business to please yourself, and hers to please you.

If you would have a boy to despise his mother, let her keep him at home, and spend her life in petting him up, and slaving to indulge his follies and caprices.

I flatter myself, at times, that though among them, I am not of them

I have often wished in vain,' said she, 'for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it.' 'That,' replied I, 'is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us.

You think, because I always do as you bid me, I have no judgment of my own: but only try me—that is all I ask—and you shall see what I can do.

Never! while heaven spares my reason,' replied I, snatching away the hand he had presumed to seize and press between his own.

I am above eighteen, and quite able to take care of myself, and others too. You do not know half the wisdom and prudence I possess, because I have never been tried.

You think, because I always do as you bid me, I have no judgement of my own: but only try me — that is all I ask — and you shall see what I can do.

When I tell you not to marry without love, I do not advise you to marry for love alone: there are many, many other things to be considered. Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them . . . .

You'll find a man can live without his money as merrily as a tortoise without its head, or a wasp without its body." '"But