black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

An honorable human relationship … is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

Adrienne Rich

Since men are loyal at least to their own world-view, their laws of brotherhood and self-interest.
ADRIENNE RICH

Brotherhood Interest Least Loyal Men Own Self Since View World
I feel more helpless with you than without you.
ADRIENNE RICH

Feel Helpless More Without You
A language is a map of our failures.
ADRIENNE RICH

Failure Language Map
I guess what concerns me always is the need for a field, a rich compost, for any art to flourish. But however isolate or unheard you may feel, if you have the need to write poetry, are compelled to write it, you go on, whether there is resonance or not.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Compost Concern Feel Field Flourish Guess Isolate Need Rich Unheard Writing
To seek visions, to dream dreams, is essential, and it is also essential to try new ways of living, to make room for serious experimentation, to respect the effort even where it fails.
ADRIENNE RICH

Dream Effort Essential Experiment Living New Room Seek Serious Try Vision
What we see, we see and seeing is changing
ADRIENNE RICH

Changing See Seeing
I don’t trust them but I’m learning to use them.
ADRIENNE RICH

Don't Learning Trust Use
False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news False history gets written every day … the lesbian archaeologist watches herself sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing, asking the clay all questions but her own.
ADRIENNE RICH

Clay Day Every False History Watches Written
We’ve learned a lot from the great psychologists. Wilhelm Reich wrote about the relationship between fascism and sexual repression.
ADRIENNE RICH

Fascism Great Group Learned People Psychologist Relationship Repression Sexual Support Wrote
What would it mean to live in a city whose people were changing each other’s despair into hope?– You yourself must change it.
ADRIENNE RICH

Change Changing Cities Despair Hope Mean
They can rule the world while they can persuade us our pain belongs in some order is death by famine worse than death by suicide, than a life of famine and suicide…?
ADRIENNE RICH

Belong Death Famine Pain Persuade Suicide Wose
Made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language – this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.
ADRIENNE RICH

Buried Collapse Difficult Inadequate Memory Merely Unspeakable Unspoken
Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.
ADRIENNE RICH

Assumption Drenched Know Ourselves Until
If we had time and no money, living by our wits, what story would you tell?
ADRIENNE RICH

Living Money No Stories Tell Wit
Every poem breaks a silence that had to be overcome.
ADRIENNE RICH

Break Overcome Overcoming Poem Silence
If I cling to circumstances I could feel not responsible. Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choose Circumstance End Feel Loser Responsible

An honorable human relationship … is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

An honorable human relationship … is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Adrienne Rich Quotes