Catherynne M. Valente Quotes

Nobody told me how to talk or think.

Children have their own mind.

I would rather just do the things I want to do.

People have to do what they want to do.

Love means each person is free to follow his or her own heart.

I haven't even had a life I could call my own, and you're ready to slot me into the grand design. Well, I don't think I want to go. I want to be my own design.

I leave you free to be yourself: to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways that you decide are to your liking.

Like my freedom. If I feel like I'm being controlled, I get crazy. Because I know I made it this far by following my intuition. I think people like who I am, and I like who I am, and I want to be a better version of myself every single day. So stop controlling me!

There is one thing you and I as parents cannot do, not do we want to do if we really think about it, and that's control our children's will--that spirit that lets them be themselves apart from you and me. They are not ours to possess, control, manipulate, or even to make mind.

I will not live out of me I will not see with others' eyes My good is good, my evil ill I would be free.

I think the way I want to think. I live the way I want to live.

You can not live your life just based on what everyone else thinks.

I don't believe that everyone else really cares what I do all the time. I think in general you have to follow your own path and your own heart and not worry about what everybody else wants you to do. They should be worried about what they're going to do.

Metallica lives in a little bubble. We just do our own thing. We're not part of any trends or waves or fads. We can just do our own thing, all the time. It's a great luxury. I don't think we were really appreciative of it until recently, and really understood that it is what keeps us alive. It's great to be able to have the freedom to run around and do all this crazy stuff, and at all cost, avoid making another record, just to piss our managers off.

As long as a man had the courage to reject what society told him to do, he could live life on his own terms. To what end? To be free. But free to what end? To read books, to write books, to think.

Babies, they learn how to walk and they are already trying to run away. You can't reach the doorknob, you only know us, think it through.

No rebellious heart is ever at ease with paths established by others.

No one tells me what to think. I think for me.

You don't have to live anybody else's story.

No matter how much a young man likes to think for himself, he is always trying to model himself on some abstract pattern largely derived from the example of the world around him. And a man, no matter how conservative, shows his own worth by his personal deviation from that pattern.

I never liked to be pigeon-holed and I never liked people to think that they know who I am. I like to keep people guessing.

I don't mean you disregard every rule of your community. I don't go around naked, for example. I don't run through red lights. The little things, I can obey. But the big things- how we think, what we value- those you must choose yourself. You can't let anyone-or any society- determine those for you. ' -Morrie Schwartz

I've lived a life that's full, I traveled each and ev'ry highway, And more, much more than this, I did it my way.

Do what you really want to do. Don't play their game! Don't do what they want. Find your own way.

We've got minds and souls as well as hearts; ambition and talents as well as beauty and accomplishments; and we want to live and learn as well as love and be loved. I'm sick of being told that is all a woman is fit for! I won't have anything to do with love until I prove that I am something beside a housekeeper and a baby-tender!