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There is no ‘the truth,’ ‘a truth’–truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity.

Adrienne Rich

Any woman’s death diminishes me.
ADRIENNE RICH

Death Diminish Diminishes Woman
The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.
ADRIENNE RICH

Aquariums Bodies Bring Essential Human Mean More Repossession Seizing Society Women
I think my work comes out of both an intense desire for connection and what it means to feel isolated. There’s always going to be a kind of tidal movement back and forth between the two.
ADRIENNE RICH

Connection Going Isolated Kind Mean Movement Thinking Two
I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralysed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something – a great deal – to do with how we live our lives and whom we end up speaking with and hearing.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Choice Help Keep Language Life Move Paralysed Respect
“Global culture” is of course not a culture: it’s the global marketing and imposing of commodities and images for the interests of the few at the expense of the many.
ADRIENNE RICH

Commodity Culture Image Imposing Interest Marketing
The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can’t afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life.
ADRIENNE RICH

Afford Artist Deceiving Self Sentimental Serious
The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire. The complexity and fecundity of poetry come from the same struggle.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Complexity Desire Dream Fecundity Struggle Struggling Truth Unconcious
We who were loved will never unlive that crippling fever.
ADRIENNE RICH

Crippling Fever Love Loved Unlive
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
The liar leads an existence of unutterable loneliness.
ADRIENNE RICH

Existence Liar Loneliness Lying Unutterable
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
Poetry reaches into places in us that we are suppose to ignore or mistrust, that are perceived as subversive or non-useful, in what is fast becoming known as global culture.
ADRIENNE RICH

Becoming Culture Global Mistrust Perceived Place Poetry Subversive Suppose Useful
It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
ADRIENNE RICH

Count Few Hard Important People Way
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
There is no ‘the truth,’ ‘a truth’–truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity.
ADRIENNE RICH

Complexity Increasing One System Thing Truth
A life I didn’t choose chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choose Even Life One Tool Wrong

There is no ‘the truth,’ ‘a truth’–truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity.

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There is no ‘the truth,’ ‘a truth’–truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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