The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.
ADRIENNE RICHIn America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger.
More Adrienne Rich Quotes
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It is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.
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Life on the planet is born of woman.
ADRIENNE RICH -
As her sons have seen her: the mother in patriarchy: controlling, erotic, castrating, heart-suffering, guilt-ridden, and guilt-provoking; a marble brow.
ADRIENNE RICH -
Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler – for the liar – than it really is, or ought to be.
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Strangers are an endangered species.
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Since we’re not young, weeks have to do time for years of missing each other.Yet only this odd warp in time tells me we’re not young.
ADRIENNE RICH -
If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.
ADRIENNE RICH -
We have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.
ADRIENNE RICH -
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness.
ADRIENNE RICH -
Whether of love and sexuality or creativity or the sense of connectedness with other beings, human and otherwise?
ADRIENNE RICH -
False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news.
ADRIENNE RICH -
Women’s art, though created in solitude, wells up out of community.
ADRIENNE RICH -
If you teach, you see this is not true. It may be that newer generations do not worship the text as some of their elders do.
ADRIENNE RICH -
All new learning looks at first like chaos.
ADRIENNE RICH -
The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power.
ADRIENNE RICH