Quotes About Autonomy

At first the lives of women frightened me. They seemed so fragile, so dependent on fathers and husbands and brothers and lovers. Gradually, though, I noticed how supple their lives were beneath the surface. I saw, too, that sooner or later, by choice or by chance most women faced the task of adapting to a future on their own. When at my most optimistic, I thought of it as independence, in darker moods, as survival. Either way, women had to do it.

Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me.

Don't wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.

You seem so clear about who you are. So certain that you are just right as you are, that for all your intelligence and maybe in spite of it, you never seem to need a second opinion.

the God of woman is autonomy

subservience of any kind is death to the spirit.

Without money of one's own in a capitalist society, there is no such thing as independence.

Why you like this, huh? Why you always think you have to do things your own way? I ast your mama bout it one time, while you was in jail. What she say? ast Sofia. She say you think your way as good as anybody else's. Plus, it yours. Sofia laugh.

But one thing I do thank her for, for teaching me to learn for myself, by reading and studying and writing a clear hand.

each of us has knowledge of how to live life differently that no one taught us, and that we can find this knowledge inside ourselves and put it to use.

Quién soy yo para decirle a quién ha de querer? Lo mío es querer y nada más.

The little I knew about my own self wouldn't have filled a thimble!... But one thing I do thank her for, for teaching me to learn for myself, by reading and studying and writing a clear hand. And for keeping alive in me somehow the desire to know.

But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something

Why any woman give a sh*t what people think is a mystery to me.

I have never read Sylvia Plath. My mother has never read Virginia Woolf. In general, we have stayed out of one another's way like this.

I guess I felt like I'd failed her [by throwing up]. She had so many demands on her...The one thing she needed from me was that I not need anything from her [Bechdel's mother].

Some of my subjects do not know what is good for them

I believe what I choose. I am not as simple as I seem. Now go!

increasingly women are buying stuff for themselves with their own money. They buy their own toys.

I was in control of every area of my life except for smoking. The cigarette was deciding where I could go, what I could do, when I could do it and with whom.

Freedom does that to people, he realizes. Once you've tasted it, ou never want to let go.

the identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute

DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.

Satana: Vorrei chiedere un unico favore, egli disse. Dio: Di' pure. Mi risulta che sta per essere creato l'uomo. Avrà bisogno di leggi. Miserabile! Tu, destinato ad essere il suo avversario, tu, che dall'alba dell'eternità sei stato riempito d'odio per l'anima sua, tu chiedi il diritto di fargli le leggi? Chiedo perdono; ciò che domando è che gli sia permesso di farsele da solo". E così fu ordinato.