black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.

Adrienne Rich

The will to change begins in the body, not in the mind.
ADRIENNE RICH

Begin Body Change Mind Will
Language is as real, as tangible, in our lives as streets, pipelines, telephone switchboards, microwaves, radioactivity, cloning laboratories, nuclear power stations.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cloning Laboratories Live Nuclear Pipeline Power Radioactivity Real Street Switchboard Telephone
The assumption that women are a subgroup, that men’s culture is the ‘real’ world, that patriarchy is equivalent to culture and culture to patriarchy, that the ‘great’ or ‘liberalizing’ periods of history have been the same for women as for men.
ADRIENNE RICH

Assumption Culture Men Patriarchy Real Subgroup Women World
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
Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence, and the first question we might ask any poem is, What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?
ADRIENNE RICH

Breaking Broken Historian might Poem Question Real Silence Tended
Go back so far there is another language go back far enough the language is no longer personal.
ADRIENNE RICH

Enough Language Longer Personal
If you teach, you see this is not true. It may be that newer generations do not worship the text as some of their elders do.
ADRIENNE RICH

Been Compared Elder Generation Teach Worship
The suppressed lesbian I had been carrying in me since adolescence began to stretch her limbs.
ADRIENNE RICH

Adolescence Carrying Lesbian Limb Sexuality Stretch
The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bodies Expediency Gaslight Instinct Mind Truth
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
Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted”, for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience.
ADRIENNE RICH

Centuries Culture Driven Experience Gaslight Instinct Mad Male Mind Reality Refutation Women
As her sons have seen her: the mother in patriarchy: controlling, erotic, castrating, heart-suffering, guilt-ridden, and guilt-provoking; a marble brow.
ADRIENNE RICH

Catering Controlling Erotic Guilt Heart Marble Mother Patriarchy Provoking Riddem Son
In 1945, just at the end of World War II, the American poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote a remarkable book called The Life of Poetry. In it she says that on any particular day in the world.
ADRIENNE RICH

Book Country End Immediately Poet Remarkable War World Wrote
A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
ADRIENNE RICH

Monster Sleep Think Thinking Woman
I came to explore the wreck.
ADRIENNE RICH

Came Explore Wreck
These scars bear witness but whether to repair or to destruction I no longer know.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bear Destruction Longer Scar Witness

Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Adrienne Rich Quotes