Adrienne Rich Quotes, Children Quotes, Feelings Quotes

My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Children Quotes , Feelings Quotes

Young people know they are being betrayed by he mass electronic media. It caricatures them, caricatures others. It is not really about them though it targets them as consumers.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Media Quotes , People Quotes

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Strong Women Quotes , Hard Work Quotes

We have lived with violence far too long.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Long Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Heart Quotes , Age Quotes

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; and that we can deflect words by trivialization, of course, but also by ritualized respect, or we can let them enter our souls and mix with the juices of our minds.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Life Quotes , Respect Quotes

The [Vietnam War Memorial] Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Wall Quotes , War Quotes

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Creating Quotes , Telling The Truth Quotes

I'd call it love if love didn't take so many years but lust too is a jewel.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Sex Quotes , Jewels Quotes

In this disintegrative, technologically-manic time, when public language is so debased, poetry continues to matter because it's the art that reintegrates words, speech, voice, breath, music, bodily tempo, and the powers of the imagination.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Art Quotes , Voice Quotes

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Fake People Quotes , Memories Quotes

Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , War Quotes , Imagination Quotes

Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Writing Quotes , Voice Quotes

We who were loved will never unlive that crippling fever.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Love Quotes

One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else, what it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.

6 years ago

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It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Mothers Day Quotes , Children Quotes

The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people.To "see the light" too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Change Quotes , Light Quotes

Language is power... Language can be used as a means of changing reality.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Writing Quotes , Mean Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Religious Quotes , Law Quotes

The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Damage Quotes , Purpose Quotes