Quotes About Autonomy

Everything is organized. If something is broken, I fix it. If something goes wrong, it's my own fault. If I have it, I send money to the family, and they can do with it what they want, and I won't depend on them, and they won't depend on me.

They're not trying to get filthy rich. They don't expect someone else to do what they can do for themselves.

It felt sometimes as if I'd been caught in a tide, carried along by the current of other people's expectations before I'd clearly defined my own.

no matter the circumstances outside ourselves, we always have a choice.

No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change

Much of my rebelliousness starts with indifference to what is urgently important to others.

We were not supposed to know anything about our own bodies or to participate in decision-making about our own care.

Science works, of course, but from an aesthetic point of view, was it really a great improvement over mythology? Why do we insist that theories work, when they might just as well sit around and look pretty? I couldn't help observing that for every advance in science...some perfectly competent goddess or demiurge is put out of work, a hypothesized spirit dies, or a living thing surrenders its autonomy.

I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations. And you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful If not, it can't be helped.

Once I realized I was old enough to die, I decided that I was also old enough not to incur any more suffering, annoyance, or boredom in the pursuit of a longer life." No more annual exams, cancer screenings, mammograms, and any other measure "expected of a responsible person with health insurance….Not only do I reject the torment of a medicalized death, but I refuse to accept a medicalized life.

To be held behind walls, however comfortable the surroundings, is a torment for someone who wants to leave. It is better than a dungeon, of course, but you are not your own master.

It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.

You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.

My life is a pitiful, mechanical thing without a past, like a little wind-up car, ready to run in any direction someone points me.

Mama always said barefoot and pregnant was not my style. She knew.

That is surely childhood's end, when you look at a thing like a rabbit needing skinned and have to say: Nobody else is going to do this.

A woman knows she can walk away from a pot to tend something else and the pot will go on boiling; if she couldn't, this world would end at once.

Thatcher thought Mary was not invisible, but as free as any woman could be. And in the grip of fresh discoveries, always.

It hit me pretty hard, how there's no kind of sad in this world that will stop it turning. People will keep on wanting what they want, and you're on your own.

you always write about individualism vs. community, and that you see independence as stupidity and instead celebrate dependency.

A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing.

driving me to see my mom get put in the ground. It hit me pretty hard, how there's no kind of sad in this world that will stop it turning. People will keep on wanting what they want, and you're on your own.

One has only a life of one's own.

In their universe, nobody shuts you down for being different and wanting the moon. In ours, you live on a tether: to family, parents if you're lucky, older people raising you if less so, that you yourself will end up looking after by and by.