All new learning looks at first like chaos.
ADRIENNE RICHLesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.
More Adrienne Rich Quotes
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In the interstices of language lie powerful secrets of the culture.
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And that we can deflect words by trivialization, of course, but also by ritualized respect, or we can let them enter our souls and mix with the juices of our minds.
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Grief held back from the lips wears at the heart; the drop that refused to join the river dried up in the dust.
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The most notable fact that our culture imprints on women is a sense of our limits.
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The moment of change is the only poem.
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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.
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Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.
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Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence, and the first question we might ask any poem is, What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?
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We who were loved will never unlive that crippling fever.
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In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe.
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There is no ‘the truth’,’a truth’ – truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface.
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The impulse to create begins – often terribly and fearfully – in a tunnel of silence.
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Show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation.
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Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.
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A book of poems doesn’t just come out by chance, an editor has to select it, a publisher has to distribute it or you will never see it.
ADRIENNE RICH