Limited Autonomy Quotes

We have no strategy. It is the government that sets the strategy. All we can do it try and figure out what the government will do.

You want to live your own life, but when you have fame, there are certain things you can't get away with.

When you're young, you don't have a lot of control over even basic things in your life - where you live, what you eat, where you go during the day, how you get there. You don't have a lot of control, and that can feel sort of unstable in its own way because you don't get a say in those basic things.

I am an actress - I am paid to verbalize other people's words, not create my own.

I went straight from high school to 'Gossip Girl,' and both were very structured, scheduled environments, so I never had freedom to explore and carve my own path.

Writing screenplays is not my business. I've written half a dozen, and maybe half of those were made. But it was never a satisfying experience. It was just work. You're an employee. You would be told what to do. Studio execs would cross out my dialogue and put in their dialogue.

If you're famous, you're not free.

Otherwise, to be a movie star, it's a lot of compromise and also a lot of headaches. You can't do what you want. You become a prisoner of your fame. This happened to me in France and I don't want it.

Internal self-government under a local constitution was authorized by Congress and approved by the residents in 1952, but federal law is supreme in Puerto Rico and residents do not have voting representation in the Congress.

If you give children the freedom to do very little, quite a lot will do very little.

I was afraid of marriage. I had the impression married life would take up all my time. I saw myself drowning in visits and parties. No freedom.

It started off really…claustrophobic. I feel like I was really really protected. Really guarded with myself. I feel like they [Def Jam] were giving me the blueprint and I couldn’t get with that

But we were made to believe and not allowed to think. We were told to obey, rather than to experiment and investigate.

It seems to me that society usually wins. There are, to be sure, free spirits in the world, but their freedom, in the last analysis, is not much greater than that of a canary in a cage. They may leap from perch to perch; they may bathe and guzzle at their will; they may flap their wings and sing. But they are still in the cage, and soon or late it conquers them.

The biggest stress for me at New York Magazine was when I was a middle-of-the-pack editor, and I had no control over my own schedule.

I don't get to make many choices in my life as a single parent.

I work whenever I'm let.

In all the time I was with L.T.D., I was never allowed to do an interview by myself. I wasn't even allowed to talk on stage between songs. I couldn't get a publishing agreement or a production deal because everyone had their own little role to play in the group... and the money, well, anything split 10 ways can't be much.

My box bedroom can only fit a bed and a wardrobe but it was my whole world. My only personal space to think and dream, to cry and laugh and wait until I became old enough to do all the things I wasn't allowed to do.

Freedom has ceased to be a birthright; it has come to mean whatever we are still permitted to do.

We all live in a universe in which we're either asked to or are forced to accept certain premises about our employment without having the opportunity to verify them.

A woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.

When you're an actor, you're a slave to other people's visions.

When you're on the Olympic team at 15, you don't do anything else. There's no normal social development, and your decisions are made for you.

Where I play is not for me to decide.