black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bringing Console Create Sustain Vision Woman
To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife, the physical sensations of your ordinary carnal life; and simultaneously.
ADRIENNE RICH

Belief Depended Dreamlife Intelligent Mean Multiple Choice Physical Reading Sensation Swirl
The difficulty of saying I-a phrase from the East German novelist Christa Wolf. But once having said it, as we realize the necessity to go further, isn’t there a difficulty of saying ‘we’? You cannot speak for me.
ADRIENNE RICH

Country Difficulty Further Movement Novelist People Phrases Realize Two Wolf
Women’s art, though created in solitude, wells up out of community.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Community Creative Energy Enormous Hunger Solitude Women Work
I think about the possibilities for empathy, for mutual solidarity among gay men and lesbians, not simply as people who suffer under homophobia, but as people who are also extremely creative, active, and have a particular understanding of the human condition.
ADRIENNE RICH

Gay Lesbian Men People Possibilities Solidarity Suffer Thinking
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
Art and literature have given so many people the relief of feeling connected – pulled us out of isolation. It has let us know that somebody else breathed and dreamed and had sex and loved and raged and knew loneliness the way we do.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Connected Isolation Literature Loneliness People Sex
I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bridges Especially Interested Line Long Poem Scoring Space Thinking
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 woman’s body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Erected Patriarchy Terrain Woman
We are, none of us, ‘either’ mothers or daughters; to our amazement, confusion, and greater complexity, we are both.
ADRIENNE RICH

Amazement Both Complexity Confusion Daughter Mother
I’ve had to guess at her, sewing her skin together as I sew mine, though with a different stitch
ADRIENNE RICH

Different Guess Mine Sew Skin Stitch Together
There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.) I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then.
ADRIENNE RICH

Among Counted Down Must None Perhaps Sit Weep
Sexist grammar burns into the brains of little girls and young women a message that the male is the norm, the standard, the central figure beside which we are all deviants.
ADRIENNE RICH

Brain Burn Deviant Girl Grammar Men Message Norm Standard Thinking Young
Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we’re not alone in the universe, even in sleep.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alone Enough Meadow Midnight Planet Rotating Sleep Sleeping Touch Turning
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

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Adrienne Rich Quotes