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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

I cannot speak for you. Two thoughts: there is no liberation that only knows how to say ‘I’; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through.
ADRIENNE RICH

Collective Know Liberation Movement Say Speak Thought
One does not give birth in a void, but rather in a cultural and political context. Laws, professional codes, religious sanctions, and ethnic traditions all affect women’s choices concerning childbirth.
ADRIENNE RICH

Birth Code Cultural Giving Law Professional Religious
Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.
ADRIENNE RICH

Breaking Comprise Compulsory Existence Heterosexuality Lesbian Life Male Rejection Taboo
I think of poetry as something out there in the world and within each of us. I don’t mean that everyone can write poetry – it’s an art, a craft.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Craft Each Everyone Mean Poetry Something World Writing
It is unstable and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives; it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal.
ADRIENNE RICH

Changeable Daily Earth Eternal Indestructible Life Live Spawn Swallow Threating Unstable
We who were loved will never unlive that crippling fever.
ADRIENNE RICH

Crippling Fever Love Loved Unlive
The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.
ADRIENNE RICH

Damage Done Map Prevail Purpose Treasure Word
When men – insofar as they are embodiments of the patriarchal idea – have become dangerous to children and other living things, themselves included
ADRIENNE RICH

Children Dangerous Embodiment Idea Loving Man Other Patriarchal Themselves
There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice…In the end, I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Country Formula Human Justice m Relationship Overall Separate Simple Think
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
In the States, there has been, compared to the Sixties and Seventies, a huge retrenchment – not just in poetry – into the personal.
ADRIENNE RICH

Compared Country Need Personal Poetry Retrenchment Support Thinking
When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.
ADRIENNE RICH

Creating Possibility Telling Truth Woman
That’s why I want to speak to you now. To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alone Identity Now Person Responsibility Speak Take Thinking Trying Warrior
Since we’re not young, weeks have to do time for years of missing each other.Yet only this odd warp in time tells me we’re not young.
ADRIENNE RICH

Since Time Week Wrap Years Missing Young
You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.
ADRIENNE RICH

Depended Life Must Read Writing
Our personalities seem dangerously to blur and overlap with our mother’s; and, in a desperate attempt to know where mother ends and daughter begins, we perform radical surgery.
ADRIENNE RICH

Attempt Correspond Dangerously Daughter Mother Personalities Personality

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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