Barbara Gordon Quotes

I'm playing 'chicken' with a kid called 'Robin.' I don't know why he's showing off. I don't know why I'm going along with it. I don't even know where we're going. It could be a robbery. Or prison break. A gang war. Or free donuts at Lenny's. He sees that Bat-signal in the sky and takes off. Like a bird out of Hell. And he just expects me to follow him. And I do.

I promise loyalty. I promise secrecy. And I promise courage.

I have to find another path. Divine my own future. One uniquely mine. Not a page from someone else's book. Not a fate that begins and ends on page one.

I'm not Barbara Gordon. I have to keep remembering that. Tonight, I'm not Barbara. Tonight, I'm not the Police Commissioner's daughter. Tonight, I'm the one who pored over the details of the confidential police and reports when her dad wasn't looking. I'm the one who recognized the vintage costumes you wear. Tonight? Tonight, I'm Batgirl.

I'm Oracle, I know everybody.

You know why my wheelchair doesn't have handles, Grayson? I don't like to be pushed.

It was good to see her laugh. Even if it was at me.

Y'know, a lot of the time it's like you Batguys want me to hold onto the past because you can't get over it. Understand— I have. I have a new life now. One I like — one that fulfills me. It's not the same as the one I had before, but it's good. Maybe even better.

I requested off this damn night shift four times now. Barbara needs me. Barbara and little James. So I hope it's boy, so what?

I use their expectations against them. That will be their weakness. Not mine. Let them all underestimate me. Let them think they have the upper hand over the little girl. Let them relax while the adrenaline leaks out of their systems. Let them believe they're closing their grips on a shrinking violet. And when their guard is down and their pride is rising... let me kick their butts up around their ears.

Do you think I like sending out agents to do my dirty work? Do you think I get my thrills living vicariously? Do you think I don't know hurt? Do you think I don't know hurt? You don't know hurt, sister! I can't get off the mat to take down Lynx on my own-- but you can, and by God, you will--

Wait for a hero? Barbara Joan Gordon -- Be your own damn hero.

I wonder if she stares at the ceiling too, counting sheep or doing what I do when I can’t sleep, namely, wondering what would’ve happened if Barbara Gordon never answered the door in The Killing Joke.

We used to chase each other like this. Two kids flirting in a way only a handful of people on Earth could ever match. He with his acrobatics, and me with my ballet.

You took nothing from me.

I struck out at the people who love me. Because I wanted understanding more than pity. Because I wanted respect more than comfort.

You know at the end of the day, when you close the door and you're all alone... And you strip off your armor and lower your guard and peel away the mask... When there's nobody watching and nothing to hide... And you no longer need to be strong or clever or pretty or brave... There's just you. That's it. That's the soul.

Impersonating a quiet, gentle librarian like Barbara Gordon--You deserve to be taken out of circulation!

Said the writer of Proverbs, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it’ (Prov. 22:6). That training finds its roots in the home. There will be little of help from other sources. Do not depend on government to help in this darkening situation. Barbara Bush, wife of former United States president George Bush, spoke wisely when in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1990 she addressed the Wellesley College graduating class and said, ‘Your success as a family, our success as society, depends not on what happens at the White House, but on what happens inside your house.

You listen to me. You try to tell her that she failed that man... And you're not welcome here anymore.

And he was the first crush I ever had that wasn't a scientist-- it's a different thing altogether. It made me a little peeved at myself, to be honest. Half the girls in Gotham City would have been happy just touching his jacket. I didn't want it to happen. But I'm human, all right? And for a while, we were better than kids with a crush. We were actually friends.

All my life, I've had well-meaning guys hovering over me, protecting me when I didn't need or want it. Enough with the well-meaning guys. They want to keep an eye on me? I'll send their eyes back blackened.

Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Gone With the Wind in 1937. She was 37 years old at the time. Margaret Chase Smith was elected to the Senate for the first time in 1948 at the age of 49. Ruth Gordon picked up her first Oscar in 1968 for Rosemary’s Baby. She was 72 years old. Billie Jean King took the battle of women’s worth to a tennis court in Houston’s Astrodome to outplay Bobby Riggs. She was 31 years of age. Grandma Moses began a painting career at the age of 76. Anne Morrow Lindbergh followed in the shadow of her husband until she began to question the meaning of existence for individual women. She published her thoughts in Gift from the Sea in 1955, at 49. Shirley Temple Black was Ambassador to Ghana at the age of 47. Golda Meir in 1969 was elected prime minister of Israel. She had just turned 71. This summer Barbara Jordan was given official duties as a speaker at the Democratic National Convention. She is 40 years old. You can tell yourself these people started out as exceptional. You can tell yourself they had influence before they started. You can tell yourself the conditions under which they achieved were different from yours. Or you can be like a woman I knew who sat at her kitchen window year after year and watched everyone else do it and then said to herself, “It’s my turn.” I was 37 years old at the time.

When we spoil something, we deny it the conditions it requires. . . . The real spoiling of children is not in the indulging of demands or the giving of gifts, but in the ignoring of their genuine needs. —Gordon Neufeld, PhD, and Gabor Maté, MD, Hold On to Your Kids

When you let yourself feel the sadness or rage that gets stuck and buried in depression and you share those feelings, you are no longer depressed—pushed down and flattened out. You are expressing yourself and connecting with someone else. And when you do this simple thing, or anything else, for yourself, you’re no longer stuck, but moving. I tell Theresa, “If you pay attention—and much of our work is really about paying attention—to what is happening as you sit in the postures of yoga, or breathe slowly and deeply, or when you open the door to Barbara, you’ll feel that change and healing are possible, that they are already happening. Change and healing are the essence of all life, moving you deeper into it, moving you forward on your journey.

He was cocky. It would have been easy not to like him. But he was also kind, and that excused much. Kind, and...a little bit sad, somehow. I didn't understand that about him back then. But we were just kids.

After years of yearning for my dream life, it now seems like it’s on the horizon—after only a couple of days. And it’s all thanks to you, Gordon.” She propelled herself onto her tiptoes and planted a kiss on his cheek as flakes of snow fluttered to the ground around them. Waves of Grace

Gordon swallowed the growing lump in his throat. He'd been invited back by both of them. Maggie and John considered him part of their inner circle, and that made him thankful. Waves of Grace

Gordon looked between the happy couple and felt a visceral pull on his heartstrings. His parents had had such a connection, and he had wanted one for himself, too. A surge of sadness coursed through him as he wondered when he’d given up on the idea. Waves of Grace

Yeah, I was asleep, but it's okay. I was having my favorite dream. I have it all the time. I was dancing. I was beautiful. I was dancing.

Manifestations also were becoming more diverse. Mediums performed ever more astonishing feats of levitation: white-haired Henry Gordon was seen floating in the air across a sixty-foot space, balanced on nothing but one of Charles Partridge’s fingers. Trance mediums delivered inspiring addresses to large audiences on the pressing issues of the day, such as perfecting the body through diet and exercise or rehabilitating criminals through prison reform. Some mediums danced, others spoke in tongues. The number of healing mediums multiplied. To speed the process of spelling messages during seances, mediums began writing down the alphabet then pointing to specific letters rather than calling them out. In a room built by a man named Koons solely for the purpose of otherworldly communications, several spirits seemed to speak in their own voices, their words projected through a small trumpet.

If you’d like to dig more deeply into the real-life history of baby farms, orphanages, changes in adoption, Georgia Tann, and the scandal surrounding the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis, you’ll find excellent information in Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children by Viviana A. Zelizer (1985), Babies for Sale: The Tennessee Children’s Home Adoption Scandal by Linda Tollett Austin (1993), Alone in the World: Orphans and Orphanages in America by Catherine Reef (2005), and The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bisantz Raymond (2007), which also contains interviews with several of Georgia Tann’s victims. For a view of the scandal as it broke, see the original Report to Governor Gordon Browning on Shelby County Branch, Tennessee Children’s Home Society (1951), which is available through the public library system