Alex Flinn Quotes

Having children, they're not your property. They need to figure out their own views. I think my daughters have a pretty healthy self-awareness, but I can't speak on their behalf.

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.

Every child is going to grow up. You can see it happen in the books: They get older and older and belong to themselves to a greater and greater extent.

I have great friends around me that are positive and I think that's the key to life is making your own path. Set your own rules because there is no set rule, there is no set look, there is no set anything. You make your own rules in your life. You make your own decisions.

My dad let me figure out what I wanted to do on my own.

My life choices are not supposed to be the gateway to somebody else's. That's my journey.

All my children have spoken for themselves since they first learned to speak, and not always with my advance approval, and I expect that to continue in the future.

I think that parents grow up with an idea of what they want their kids to be like - and then their kids grow up to be people of themselves, of their own.

I don't think anybody can be told how to act. I think you can give advice. But you have to find your own way through it.

No matter how good you are, at some point your kids are gonna have to create their own independence and think that Mom and Dad aren't cool, just to establish themselves. That's what adolescence is about. They're gonna go through that no matter what.

I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. I'm going to figure out what that is.

Even when I was rebelling against my father, the point was to follow my own intuition and instinct.

I've always wanted to be my own person. Even when I was 'Noah who rode horses,' I wanted to be Noah Cyrus, not anyone else or a family member.

First and foremost, you do not have to live up to or emulate the lives of any of your predecessors. But at the very least, you should know about them. You will have your own life, interests, and ideas of what you want or do not want in life. Do what you enjoy doing. Be honest with yourself and others. Don't think of satisfying anyone: your elders, peers, government, religion, or children who will come after you. Develop meaningful ideals, and become conscious of others, their existence, and their lives.

Once I got to the age where I was like, "I could just do it by myself," they was like, "Go do it."

I think one thing my mother always instilled in me was a sense of individuality. Being an only child, I never thought I had to rely on anyone. I was never afraid to be alone and I was never afraid to be my own person. So when all my friends were like, "Let's smoke weed," I was like, "I'm not doing it." It wasn't because I was trying to be a rebel or because I didn't like it or I was anti-drugs. I just didn't do it because I didn't want to do it, and if I didn't want to do it, I wasn't doing it. That was it.

You must suffer me to go my own dark way.

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!

Focus on yourself -- do what you want, when you want, without having to consider anyone else's agenda.

It is easy to substitute our will for that of the child by means of suggestion or coercion; but when we have done this we have robbed him of his greatest right, the right to construct his own personality.

Today you will choose your factions. Until this point you have followed your parents’ paths, your parents’ rules. Today you will find your own path, make your own rules.

There is no sin worse in life than being boring--and nothing worse than letting other people tell you what to do. I was one of the few heiresses to walk the runway as a model. A lot of people thought that was shocking. Why did I do it? Was it a desperate cry for attention, like the papers said? Hardly. It's not like I need any more attention. Did I do it for money? Of course not. Modeling doesn't pay that well, anyway, unless you're Gisele or Cindy Crawford, or, like Patti Hansen, you get to marry a rock star. I did it because it was fun.

When you leave here today and commence the next stage of your life, you can follow someone else's script, try to make choices that will make other people happy, avoid discomfort, do what is expected, and copy the status quo. Or you can look at all that you have accomplished today and use it as fuel to venture forth and write your own story. If you do, amazing things will take shape.

Life choices and projects and photo shoots, I can't base them on anybody else but myself. I've done things where I'm like, "Do I want my dad to see this? I don't know!" But the best lesson I can teach my sisters, or any younger women, is "Do what YOU do. Don't follow me, follow you."

You must forge your own path for it to mean anything.