Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by David Mitchell

Quote by David Mitchell

Work

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is a complex and ambitious work that weaves together six distinct stories, each narrated by a different character. These narratives span a wide range of historical and geographical settings, from the 19th-century South Pacific to a dystopian future. The novel explores themes of identity, fate, and the interconnectedness of human lives, with each story influencing and enriching the others. Mitchell's writing is both lyrical and thought-provoking, challenging readers to consider the nature of existence and the impact of individual actions on the world. more

Author

David Mitchell
David Mitchell

David Mitchell is a British novelist known for his unique narrative techniques and profound humanistic concerns. His works often blend humor, satire, and philosophical thinking, winning him a wide audience. more

You May Also Like

“really they can do whatever they want. I can’t fight back, I can’t run away, and if they decide they don’t feel like letting me use the phone, what am I going to do? I’m at their mercy. I have never thought of this before, but I have never been at anyone’s mercy in my entire life. For all my complaints about my life, I am completely free.”

Addiction Ed ParallelsInstitutionalisation
Book:More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction
Create image

“Finding yourself" is not really how it works. You aren't a ten-dollar bill in last winter's coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people's opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. "Finding yourself" is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.”

SocietyIdentityConditioningSocietal ConstructsTrue To Self
Author:Emily McDowell
Create image

“Once established, the young girl's dependency is systematically supported as she proceeds through childhood. For being "nice" - nonchallenging, nonconfronting, noncomplaining - she's rewarded with good grades, the approval of her parents and teachers, and the affection of her peers. What reason is there for her to turn deviant or nonconformist? The going is good, so she conforms. Increasingly, she patterns herself after what's expected of her.”

FeminismPatriarchyGender RolesMale PrivilegeSocietal ConstructsCinderella Complex
Book:The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
Create image

“We have only one real shot at "liberation", and that is to emancipate ourselves from within. It is the thesis of this book that personal, psychological dependency - the deep wish to be taken care of by others - is the chief force holding women down today. I call this "The Cinderella Complex" - a network of largely repressed attitudes and fears that keeps women in a kind of half-light, retreating from the full use of their minds and creativity. Like Cinderella, women today are still waiting for something external to transform their lives.”

WomenFeminismPatriarchyGender RolesSocietal ConstructsCinderella ComplexEmotional Dependency
Book:The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
Create image

“Fear (...) that has no relation to capabilities or even to reality is epidemic among women today. Fear of being independent (that could mean we'd end up alone and uncared for); fear of being dependent (that could mean we'd be swallowed by some dominating "other"); fear of being competent and good at what we do (that could mean we'd have to keep on being good at what we do); fear of being incompetent (that could mean we'd have to keep on feeling shlumpy, depressed, and second class). (...) Phobia has so thoroughly infiltrated the feminine experience it is like a secret plague. It has been built up over long years by social conditioning and is all the more insidious for being so thoroughly acculturated we do not even recognize what has happened to us. Women will not become free until they stop being afraid. We will not begin to experience real change in our lives, real emancipation, until we begin the process - almost a de-brainwashing - of working through the anxieties that prevent us from feeling competent and whole.”

FearWomenFeminismOppressionInsecurityPatriarchyGender RolesBrainwashingMale PrivilegeSocietal ConstructsPsychological TraumaCinderella ComplexEmotional Dependence
Book:The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
Create image

“While we avoid taking credit for success, women leap at the opportunity to take responsibility for failure. Men tend to externalize the reasons for their failure, putting it off on something or someone else. Not so women, who absorb blame as if they were born to be societys doormats. (Some women like to speak of their willingness to take blame as if it were a form of altruism. It isn't. Women take the blame because they find it scary to confront those who are actually culpable of wrongdoing.)”

WomenPatriarchyGender RolesDouble StandardsMale PrivilegeSocietal ConstructsPsychological TraumaCinderella Complex
Book:The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
Create image

“The psychological need to avoid independence - the "wish to be saved" - seemed to me an important issue, quite probably the most important issue facing women today. We were brought up to depend on a man and to feel naked and frightened without one. We were taught to believe that as women we cannot stand alone, that we are too fragile, too delicate, needful of protection. So that now, in these enlightened days, when our intellects tell us to stand on our own two feet, unresolved emotional issues drag us down.”

WomenFeminismPatriarchyGender RolesSocietal ConstructsCinderella ComplexEmotional Dependency
Book:The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
Create image

“Women (...) have been encouraged since they were children to be dependent to an unhealthy degree. Any woman who looks within knows that she was never trained to be comfortable with the idea of taking care of herself, standing up for herself, asserting herself. At best she may have played the game of independence, inwardly envying the boys (and later the men) because they seemed so naturally self-sufficient. It is not nature that bestows this self-sufficiency on men; it's training. Males are educated for independence from the day they are born. Just as systematically, women are taught that they have an out - that someday, in some way, they are going to be saved. That is the fairy tale, the life-message (...) We may venture out on our own for a while. We may go away to school, work, travel; we may even make good money, but underneath it all there is a finite quality to our feelings about independence. Only hang on long enough, the childhood story goes, and someday someone will come along to rescue you from the anxiety of authentic living. (The only savior the boy learns about is himself.)”

WomenFeminismPatriarchyGender RolesMale PrivilegeSocietal ConstructsCinderella ComplexEmotional Dependency
Book:The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
Create image

“(...) performance anxiety [in the worplace] is connected to other, more general fears which have to do with feeling inadequate and defenseless in the world: the fear of retaliation from someone with whom one disagrees; the fear of being critisized for doing something wrong; the fear of saying "no"; the fear of stating one's needs clearly and directly, without manipulating. These are the kinds of fears that affect women in particular, because we were brought up to believe that taking care of ourselves, asserting ourselves, is unfeminine. We wish (...) to feel attractive to men: non-threatening, sweet, "feminine". This wish crimps the joy and productiveness with which women could be leading their lives.”

FeminismPatriarchyGender RolesMale PrivilegeSocietal ConstructsPsychological TraumaCinderella ComplexEmotional Dependence
Book:The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
Create image