Edwidge Danticat Quotes

Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been 'You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions.' Maybe I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.

We want more people owning things in this country. Let me put it to you bluntly: In a changing world, we want more people to have control over your own life.

Welcome to the free world. We give people the power to choose. They can even choose the wrong thing. Beautiful, isn't it?

Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.

Movements toward freedom and the self-respect that comes from something other than what people think is their most important feature.

You can't make people be or do what you want. All you can do is be unapologetic about what you want and let others show up however they can.

Everything in life, is a question of drawing a life, John, and you have to decide for yourself where to draw it. You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn't work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.

The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.

I'm not trying to say that people don't have the right opinion but I have to live my life. And I'm living it and I'm loving it.

I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

We must get rid of the idea of fulfilling what people expect us to do, and start to do what we expect from our lives.

If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one's actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.

The premise of Kiss has always been to not live within the confinements and boundaries other people set for themselves. We set our own limitations, and those are no limitations.

The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible

People are not here to meet your expectations.

The trouble is if you don’t spend your life yourself, other people spend it for you.

People who let events and circumstances dictate their lives are living reactively. That means that they don't act on life, they only react to it.

No one can understand what’s the best thing for you to do, other than yourself.

I'm definitely gonna be the People's champion ... but I just ain't gonna be the champ the way you want me to be the champ. I'm gonna be the champ the way I wanna be.

Authority is granted to people who are perceived as authoring their own words, their own actions, their own lives, rather than playing a scripted role at great remove from their own hearts.

Live your life the way you want. You'll figure it out.

I think you can find yourself in life perhaps not really being the master of your own life and it is within your own will and tenacity whether you switch the roles or not.

The only power you have on this planet is the power of your decisions.

People do whatever they want to do, y'know.

You can be the lead in your own life.