black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

In [family snapshots] the flow of profane time has been stopped and a sacred interval of self-conscious revelation has been cut from it by the edge of the picture frame and the light of the sun or the flash.
ADRIENNE RICH

Conscious Cutting Interval Light Profane Revelation Self Stopped Time
I am suspicious – first of all, in myself – of adopted mysticisms of glib spirituality, above all of white people’s tendency to … vampirize American Indian, or African, or Asian, or other ‘exotic’ ways of understanding.
ADRIENNE RICH

Adopted Country Exotic Myself Mysticisms People Suspicious Tendency Understanding White
The channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist’s concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Artist Channel Clogged Concern Song Struggle Woman
We see daily that our lives are terrible and little, without continuity, buyable and salable at any moment, mere blips on a screen, that this is the way we live now. Memory marketed as nostalgia; terror reduced to mere suspense, to melodrama.
ADRIENNE RICH

Buyable Life Live Melodrama Memories Nostalgia Salablem Blip Screen Suspense Terrible Terror Way
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
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
Show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation.
ADRIENNE RICH

Beauty Invisible Made Outlawed Possible Remind Represented Seem Separation Show
Poetry can open locked chambers of possibiity, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire.
ADRIENNE RICH

Chamber Desire Feeling Locked Poetry Possibility Recharge Zone
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
Experience is always larger than language.
ADRIENNE RICH

Always Experience Language Larger
My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.
ADRIENNE RICH

Age Cast Destroyed Extraordinary Heart Lot Moved perversely Power Reconstitute Save World
There is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women’s bodies by men.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Control Man Nothing Revolutionary Women
There is already a gap between those with education and those without. Those with educational privilege can be seen as arrogant, remote, alien – and very often they believe themselves superior.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alien Believe Education Educational Gap Privilege Remote Superior
We have lived with violence far too long.
ADRIENNE RICH

Lived Long Violence
Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness
ADRIENNE RICH

Biology Ignorance Key Ourselves Powerlessness
One line typed twenty years ago can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint to glorify art as detachment or torture of those we did not love but also did not want to kill.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Blazed Detachment Glorify Love Spraypaint Torture Typed Wall Year

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

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

More Adrienne Rich Quotes