„If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.“

„She was not to look beyond herself for the meaning of her life.“

—  Simone de Beauvoir French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist 1908 - 1986

„There was something wrong with her. She did not know what it was but there was something wrong with her. A hunger, a restlessness. An incomplete knowledge of herself. The sense of something farther away, beyond her reach.“

—  Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie, buch Half of a Yellow Sun

„She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself.“

—  Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie, buch Americanah

„Thus far woman has struggled through life with bandaged eyes, accepting the dogma of her weakness and inability to take care of herself not only physically but intellectually. She has held out a trembling hand and received gratefully the proffered aid. She has foregone her right to study, to know the laws and purposes of government to which she is subject. But there is now awakened in her a consciousness that she is defrauded of her legitimate Rights and that she never can fulfill her mission until she is placed in that position to which she feels herself called by the divinity within. Hitherto she has surrendered her person and her individuality to man, but she can no longer do this and not feel that she is outraging her nature and her God.“

—  Sarah Grimké American abolitionist 1792 - 1873

„She existed in her friends; there she was. All the parts of herself she'd forgotten. She knew herself best when she was with them.“

—  Ann Brashares, buch Sisterhood Everlasting

„Oh, she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh, and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind.“

—  Billy Joel American singer-songwriter and pianist 1949

„I can give her no greater power than she has already," said the woman; "don't you see how strong that is? How men and animals are obliged to serve her, and how well she has got through the world, barefooted as she is. She cannot receive any power from me greater than she now has, which consists in her own purity and innocence of heart. If she cannot herself obtain access to the Snow Queen, and remove the glass fragments from little Kay, we can do nothing to help her.“

—  Hans Christian Andersen, buch Die Schneekönigin

„She didn't know how to love, to give herself to someone, to out herself in someone else's keeping and take him into hers. She didn't trust anyone with her heart - or the darker places of her soul.“

—  Christine Feehan American writer

„Far away in the thirties and forties she (the girl you want to be) is waiting her turn. Her body, brain, her soul are in your girlish hands. She cannot help herself. What will you leave for her? … Will you throw away her inheritance?“

—  David Starr Jordan American ichthyologist and educator 1851 - 1931

„Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.“

—  Louisa May Alcott, buch Little Women

„She became whoever she needed to be to survive, but she never let anyone else define her.“

—  Jodi Picoult, buch The Storyteller

„She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.“

—  Jonathan Safran Foer, buch Extrem laut und unglaublich nah

„She could only realize that she herself — her present self — was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes.“

—  Kate Chopin, buch The Awakening

„If in later life she has mastered her hunger drive by ego control, she may assume that she can control her fate herself. But that ego may in fact be very weak, because it has been built by cutting herself off from the mainstream of life through severe dieting. It is built on negative rather than positive need. In a real life crisis, such an ego may fail to operate because she does not know consciously what her own needs are. […] An ego which sets itself up against Fate is attempting to usurp the power of the Self; it swings from light to dark, from inflation to depression. Only when her ego is firmly rooted in her own feminine feeling can a woman be released from her compulsive behavior.“

—  Marion Woodman Canadian writer 1928 - 2018

„She wanted to feel safe. Untouchable in her home. The ultimate female fantasy.“

—  Kathy Reichs, buch Déjà Dead

„An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged: no harm can be done.“

—  Jane Austen, buch Mansfield Park

„And although she was sometimes dissatisfied with herself, she felt unable to go beyond her own limitations. Books were safer.“

—  Paulo Coelho, buch Brida

„"But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all — without any place even for a heart to live in." "I cannot quite tell," she said; "but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her before you saw her beauty … But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely—with a self-destructive beauty…"“

—  George MacDonald, buch Phantastes

„Life Plan:
I asked her what she planned to do with her life & she said she was way beyond that point already. I'm just happy I remember to be there when it happens, she said.“

—  Brian Andreas American artist 1956