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When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you’re not in it, there’s a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.

Adrienne Rich

It is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society.
ADRIENNE RICH

Destructiveness Dominated Male Refusal Self Society
Only where there is language is there world.
ADRIENNE RICH

Language Only World
When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you’re not in it, there’s a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.
ADRIENNE RICH

Authority Disequilibrium Mirror Moment Psychic Teacher World
What it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.
ADRIENNE RICH

Another Body Live Ourselves Sense Skin Surpass
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
Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else.
ADRIENNE RICH

Biography Censored Collection Image Letter Lying Memories Omitted Undepiched Unnamed
When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors.
ADRIENNE RICH

Authority Describe Disequilibrium Individual Strength Mirror Physic Teacher World
We must use what we have to invent what we desire.
ADRIENNE RICH

Desire Dream Invent Lose Success Use
The mind’s passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.
ADRIENNE RICH

Another Mind Obscurity Passion Singling Tale
If we had time and no money, living by our wits, what story would you tell?
ADRIENNE RICH

Living Money No Stories Tell Wit
False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news False history gets written every day … the lesbian archaeologist watches herself sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing, asking the clay all questions but her own.
ADRIENNE RICH

Clay Day Every False History Watches Written
Women’s art, though created in solitude, wells up out of community.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Community Creative Energy Enormous Hunger Solitude Women Work
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
If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.
ADRIENNE RICH

Begin Brutalized Dignity Empowering Hope People Powerless Society Transform Trying
I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence -from “Splittings
ADRIENNE RICH

Choose Intelligence Love Splitting Time
That primary quality of being which knows itself, its passions, only against an otherness that has to be dehumanized. I grew up in white silence that was utterly obsessional. Race was the theme whatever the topic.
ADRIENNE RICH

Dehumanized Gew Itself Know Obsessional Otherness Passion Primarily Quality Race Silence Topic White

When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you’re not in it, there’s a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.

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When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you’re not in it, there’s a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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