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To conjure with the passive culture and adapt to its rules is to degrade and deny the fullness of our meaning and intention.

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.
ADRIENNE RICH

Another Art Being Desire Element Existence Grief Human Life Love
How we dwelt in two worlds the daughters and the mothers in the kingdom of the sons.
ADRIENNE RICH

Daughter Dwelt Kingdom Mother Son World
Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Decorate Dinner Hold Hostage Mean Nothing Power Table
In 1945, just at the end of World War II, the American poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote a remarkable book called The Life of Poetry. In it she says that on any particular day in the world.
ADRIENNE RICH

Book Country End Immediately Poet Remarkable War World Wrote
“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
Nothing could have prepared me for the realization that I was a mother … when I knew I was still in a state of uncreation myself.
ADRIENNE RICH

Knew Mother Nothing Prepared Realization State Uncertain
To become a token woman – whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters – is to become something less than a man.
ADRIENNE RICH

Brotherhood Denying Law Less Man Nobel Prize Self Sister tenure Winning Woman
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
The most notable fact that our culture imprints on women is a sense of our limits.
ADRIENNE RICH

Culture Fact Important Imprint Limit Notable Sense
Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alike Biological Bodies Charges Energy Giving Human Nature Nothing Probably Resonant Two
I wanted him [my father] to cherish and approve of me, not as he had when I was a child, but as the woman I was, who had her own mind and had made her own choices.
ADRIENNE RICH

Approve Cherish Children Choice Father Made Mind Wanted
Heterosexuality has been forcibly and subliminally imposed on women. Yet everywhere women have resisted it, often at the cost of physical torture, imprisonment, psychosurgery, social ostracism, and extreme poverty.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cost Forcibly Heterosexuality Imposed Poverty Subliminally Woman
The will to change begins in the body, not in the mind.
ADRIENNE RICH

Begin Body Change Mind Will
And perhaps there is none now; but we will have to make it, we who want an end to suffering, who want to change the laws of history, if we are not to give ourselves away.
ADRIENNE RICH

Change History Make Perhaps Suffering
The mind’s passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.
ADRIENNE RICH

Another Mind Obscurity Passion Singling Tale
When my dreams showed signs of becoming politically correct no unruly images escaping beyond borders … then I began to wonder
ADRIENNE RICH

Becoming Border Correct Dream Escaping Political Politically Showed Sign

To conjure with the passive culture and adapt to its rules is to degrade and deny the fullness of our meaning and intention.

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To conjure with the passive culture and adapt to its rules is to degrade and deny the fullness of our meaning and intention.

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Popular Authors

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