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 RICHIt is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.
More Adrienne Rich Quotes
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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 -
A language is a map of our failures.
ADRIENNE RICH -
Behind all art is an element of desire…Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art.
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The most notable fact that our culture imprints on women is a sense of our limits.
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The password is a flicker of an eyelash.
ADRIENNE RICH -
The moment of change is the only poem.
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Since men are loyal at least to their own world-view, their laws of brotherhood and self-interest.
ADRIENNE RICH -
I am uncomfortable with talking of poetry as a priestly profession, because I have little use for organized religions and priestly hierarchies. They have demoralized, persecuted, so many, including women, gays, non-believers.
ADRIENNE RICH -
When someone, let’s say a teacher, speaks of the world and you are not in it, it’s like looking into the mirror and seeing nothing.
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Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.
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The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement.
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Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin.
ADRIENNE RICH -
“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 -
The woman’s body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected.
ADRIENNE RICH -
We have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.
ADRIENNE RICH