Quotes About Autonomy

I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely.

You want your decisions taken away from you so you won't be responsible for your own actions?

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

She had her reasons. Not that they were the same as anybody else's reasons.

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.

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.

I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for. There wasn't a lot of choice, but there was some, and this is what I chose.

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

Nobody is any authority of the fucks other people give.

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.

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?

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.

I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it's shameful or immodest but because I don't want to see it. I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely.   I

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

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.

women on their own, making up their minds. They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word undone. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society of dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.

Hell we can make for ourselves.

the best and most cost-effective way to control women for reproductive and other purposes was through women themselves.

I am still a coward, still fearful; none of that has changed. But I turn and walk away from her. It's like stepping off a cliff, believing the air will hold you up. And it does. I see that I don't have to do what she says, and worse and better, I've never had to do what she says. I can do what I like.

take your time, leave mine alone

Right now I still have some choice in the matter. Not whether to die, but when and how. Isn't that freedom of a sort?

Right now I have some choice in the matter. Not whether to die, but when and how. Isn't that a freedom of sort? Oh, and who to take down with me. I have made my list

I'm not going to have a husband anyway, said Laura. I'm going to live by myself in the garage.