black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

It’s been associated with the power of the word, with the sacred, with magic and transformation, with the oral narratives that help a people cohere.

Adrienne Rich

No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city.
ADRIENNE RICH

Air Animal Blazing Budding City Dappled Exuberantly Imagined Passion Scar Sulfuric Sycamores Tree
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.’”
ADRIENNE RICH

Artist Dishonoured Honor Legal People President
A patriot is one who wrestles for the soul of her country as she wrestles for her own being.
ADRIENNE RICH

Country Own Patriotism Soul Wrestles
It is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.
ADRIENNE RICH

Important Long Optimism Pessimism Possess Term
Some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand–a center of gravity.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Book Carried Center Gravity Memory Poetry Prayer Some Stained Turn Varied
The most important thing a woman can do for another is to illuminate her actual possibilities.
ADRIENNE RICH

Actual Another Illuminate Important Most Possibilities Woman
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
But nothing less than the most radical imagination will carry us beyond this place, beyond the mere struggle for survival, to that lucid recognition of our possibilities which will keep us impatient, and unresigned to mere survival.
ADRIENNE RICH

Envying Imagination Imagine Place Possibilities Struggle Survival Unresigned
One does not give birth in a void, but rather in a cultural and political context. Laws, professional codes, religious sanctions, and ethnic traditions all affect women’s choices concerning childbirth.
ADRIENNE RICH

Birth Code Cultural Giving Law Professional Religious
Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alike Biological Bodies Charges Energy Giving Human Nature Nothing Probably Resonant Two
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
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
Whether of love and sexuality or creativity or the sense of connectedness with other beings, human and otherwise?
ADRIENNE RICH

Connectedness Creativity Human Love Sense Sexually
The longer I live the more I mistrust theatricality, the false glamour cast by performance, the more I know its poverty beside the truths we are salvaging from the splitting-open of our lives. -from “Transcendental Etude
ADRIENNE RICH

False Glamour Longer Mistrust Performance Poverty Theatricality Transcendental
Any woman’s death diminishes me.
ADRIENNE RICH

Death Diminish Diminishes Woman
I am suspicious – first of all, in myself – of adopted mysticisms of glib spirituality, above all of white people’s tendency to … vampirize American Indian, or African, or Asian, or other ‘exotic’ ways of understanding.
ADRIENNE RICH

Adopted Country Exotic Myself Mysticisms People Suspicious Tendency Understanding White

It’s been associated with the power of the word, with the sacred, with magic and transformation, with the oral narratives that help a people cohere.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

It’s been associated with the power of the word, with the sacred, with magic and transformation, with the oral narratives that help a people cohere.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Adrienne Rich Quotes