“I'd sleep and forget it; I had my own life, my own sad and ragged life forever.”

“I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning book Sonnets from the Portuguese

“I just want to sleep with a clear conscience and wake up with the ability to look at myself in the mirror. I also want my life to be my own. Even if it's a shitty goddamn life, it's still mine.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

“I wanted my own computer my whole life.”

Steve Wozniak (1950) American inventor, computer engineer and programmer

“I wanted to be free. I wanted to express desires on my own, to shape my own little life.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

“I thought of the brutal truths so often borne on predawn light. I'd had a few in my time, and they'd all led to this. I was a stranger to myself. I'd gone to law school for my father, married for my father; and for that same man, and for the vile woman who shared my bed, I'd surrendered my dreams of family — my very soul. Now he was dead and all I had was this truth: My life was not my own. It belonged to an empty shell that wore my face, Yet I refused to pity myself.”

John Hart (1965) American author with multiple books and awards

“If I had to live my life over, I'd live over a saloon.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

“I live my own life and nurse my own wounds. It's not the best way to live. But it's the way I am.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

“I believe in me, in my view of the world. I believe in my responsibility for my own destiny, guilt for my own sins, merit for my own good deeds, determination of my own life. I don't believe in miracles, I believe in hard work.”

Philippa Gregory (1954) English novelist

“I don't want to be a passenger in my own life.”

Diane Ackerman (1948) Author, poet, naturalist