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A language is a map of our failures.

Adrienne Rich

When someone, let’s say a teacher, speaks of the world and you are not in it, it’s like looking into the mirror and seeing nothing.
ADRIENNE RICH

Looking Mirror Nothing Someone Speak Teacher World
These scars bear witness but whether to repair or to destruction I no longer know.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bear Destruction Longer Scar Witness
Much male fear of feminism is the fear that, in becoming whole human beings, women will cease to mother men, to provide the breast, the lullaby, the continuous attention associated by the infant with the mother.
ADRIENNE RICH

Becoming Being Breast Cease Fear Feminism Human Male Man Mother Provide Son Women
I think many poets, including myself, write both for the voice and for the page. I certainly write for the person alone in the library, who pulls down a book and it opens to a poem. I am also very conscious of what it means to read these poems aloud.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alone Book Both Certainly Conscious Library Mean Page Person Poem Poet Voice Writing
One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Body Function Great Help Imagine Live Ourselves Skin Someone Something
Pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling.
ADRIENNE RICH

Feeling Inspirational Pride Tricky
The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cease More Something Speak Truth Unconscious Want
The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement.
ADRIENNE RICH

Deepest Estrangement Material Most Mutuality Painful
The so-called multiple-choice examination sheet with the number 2 pencil to mark one choice and one choice only?
ADRIENNE RICH

Choice Examination Multiple Number Pencil Sheet
To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence– words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.
ADRIENNE RICH

Across Chalkboard Depended Dream Dredged Life Memories Public Sieved Word Writing
Strangers are an endangered species.
ADRIENNE RICH

Endangered Species Stranger
Across the curve of the earth, there are women getting up before dawn, in the blackness before the point of light, in the twilight before sunrise; there are women rising earlier than men and children to break the ice, to start the stove, to put up the pap.
ADRIENNE RICH

Blackness Children Dawn Light Running Twilight Women
There is no ‘the truth,’ ‘a truth’–truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity.
ADRIENNE RICH

Complexity Increasing One System Thing Truth
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
I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.
ADRIENNE RICH

Condition Education Health Less More Poetry Shelter Thinking Working
Art and literature have given so many people the relief of feeling connected – pulled us out of isolation. It has let us know that somebody else breathed and dreamed and had sex and loved and raged and knew loneliness the way we do.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Connected Isolation Literature Loneliness People Sex

A language is a map of our failures.

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A language is a map of our failures.

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