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When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet

Adrienne Rich

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
The [Vietnam War Memorial] Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.
ADRIENNE RICH

Citizen Class Generation Grief Magnet National Race Relationship Wall War
Behind all art is an element of desire…Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art.
ADRIENNE RICH

Another Art Being Desire Element Existence Grief Human Life Love
But before we were mothers, we have been, first of all, women, with actual bodies and actual minds.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bodies Body Mind Mother Women
It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath It will be short, it will not be simple
ADRIENNE RICH

Breath Heart Short Simple Take
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
Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Artifice Cheating Honesty Truth
Mothers and daughters have always exchanged with each other – beyond the verbally transmitted lore of female survival.
ADRIENNE RICH

Beyond Daughter Exchanged Female Mother Survival Transmitted Two Verbally
Women have always been seen as waiting: waited to be asked, waiting for our menses, in fear lest they do or do not come, waiting for men to come home from wars, or from work.
ADRIENNE RICH

Always Asked Children Come Fear Growing Lest Menses Up Waited Waiting War Women
When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.
ADRIENNE RICH

Creating Possibility Telling Truth Woman
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
It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
ADRIENNE RICH

Ambivalence Blissful Gratification Murderous Nerves Resentment Suffering
How shall we ever make the world intelligent of our movement? I do not think that the answer lies in trying to render feminism easy, popular, and instantly gratifying.
ADRIENNE RICH

Feminism Intelligent Lying Movement Render Thinking Trying
It’s as if, in the mother’s eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:’You are there!’
ADRIENNE RICH

Children Day Eye Message Mothers Smile Stroking Read Touch
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

Choice People Power Sacred Transformation
I am a feminist because I feel endangered, psychically and physically, by this society and because I believe that the women’s movement is saying that we have come to an edge of history.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bad Ass Believe Children Endangered Feminist Physically Society

When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet

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When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet

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Popular Authors

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