black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Language is as real, as tangible, in our lives as streets, pipelines, telephone switchboards, microwaves, radioactivity, cloning laboratories, nuclear power stations.

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

Children Experience Exquisite Feeling Most Suffering
I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow, and somehow, each of us will help the other live, and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.
ADRIENNE RICH

Born Each Help Helping Knowing Live Somehow Somewhere Tomorrow
A life I didn’t choose chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choose Even Life One Tool Wrong
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
It is the lesbian in us who is creative, for the dutiful daughter of the fathers in us is only a hack.
ADRIENNE RICH

Creativity Daughter Father Hack Lesbian
I long to create something that can’t be used to keep us passive: I want to write a script about plumbing, how every pipe is joined to every other.
ADRIENNE RICH

Create Every Joined Keep Knowledge Long Passive Pipe Plumbing Script Something Used Writing
What we see, we see and seeing is changing
ADRIENNE RICH

Changing See Seeing
Heterosexuality has been forcibly and subliminally imposed on women. Yet everywhere women have resisted it, often at the cost of physical torture, imprisonment, psychosurgery, social ostracism, and extreme poverty.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cost Forcibly Heterosexuality Imposed Poverty Subliminally Woman
Passion for survival is the great theme of women’s poetry.
ADRIENNE RICH

Great Passion Poetry Survival Theme Women
How we dwelt in two worlds the daughters and the mothers in the kingdom of the sons.
ADRIENNE RICH

Daughter Dwelt Kingdom Mother Son World
Poetry can add its grain to an accumulation of consciousness against the idea that there is no alternative – that we’re just in the great flow of capitalism and it can never be any different – that this is human destiny, this is human nature.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alternative Consciousness Destiny Flow Grain Idea
That’s why I want to speak to you now. To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alone Identity Now Person Responsibility Speak Take Thinking Trying Warrior
Nothing could have prepared me for the realization that I was a mother … when I knew I was still in a state of uncreation myself.
ADRIENNE RICH

Knew Mother Nothing Prepared Realization State Uncertain
The marriage-resisting women silk workers of pre-Revolutionary China, the millions of widows, midwives, and the women healers tortured and burned as witches for three centuries in Europe.
ADRIENNE RICH

Centuries Country Marriage Revolution Witch Worker
I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something – a great deal – to do with how we live our lives.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Choice Deal Inspirational Keep Language Live Moving Paralyzed Something
Poetry reaches into places in us that we are suppose to ignore or mistrust, that are perceived as subversive or non-useful, in what is fast becoming known as global culture.
ADRIENNE RICH

Becoming Culture Global Mistrust Perceived Place Poetry Subversive Suppose Useful

Language is as real, as tangible, in our lives as streets, pipelines, telephone switchboards, microwaves, radioactivity, cloning laboratories, nuclear power stations.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Language is as real, as tangible, in our lives as streets, pipelines, telephone switchboards, microwaves, radioactivity, cloning laboratories, nuclear power stations.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Adrienne Rich Quotes