Adrienne Rich Quotes, Maps Quotes

A language is a map of our failures

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Maps Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Country Quotes , Art Quotes

Mothers and daughters have always exchanged with each other - beyond the verbally transmitted lore of female survival - a knowledge that is subliminal, subversive, preverbal: the knowledge flowing between two alike bodies, one of which has spent nine months inside the other.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Daughter Quotes , Mother Quotes

The password is a flicker of an eyelash.

6 years ago

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War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political.

6 years ago

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The most notable fact that our culture imprints on women is a sense of our limits. The most important thing a woman can do for another is to illuminate her actual possibilities.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Important Quotes , Culture 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

Pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling.

6 years ago

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How we dwelt in two worlds the daughters and the mothers in the kingdom of the sons.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Daughter Quotes , Mother Quotes

[The poet] is endowed to speak for those who do not have the gift of language, or to see for those who - for whatever reasons - are less conscious of what they are living through. It is as though the risks of the poet's existence can be put to some use beyond her own survival.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Risk Quotes , Survival Quotes

Reality, the oppressor's tongue.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Reality Quotes , Poetry Quotes

... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Spiritual Quotes , Aquifers Quotes

As her sons have seen her: the mother in patriarchy: controlling, erotic, castrating, heart-suffering, guilt-ridden, and guilt-provoking; a marble brow, a huge breast, an avid cave; between her legs snakes, swamp-grass, or teeth; on her lap a helpless infant or a martyred son. She exists for one purpose: to bear and nourish the son.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Mother Quotes , Heart Quotes

The mind's passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Passion Quotes , Mind Quotes

I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Giving Quotes , Delight Quotes

We must use what we have to invent what we desire.

6 years ago

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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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Daughter Quotes , Mother Quotes

We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. 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. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Children Quotes , New Relationship Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Time Quotes , Years Quotes

Poetry can add its grain to an accumulation of consciousness against the idea that there is no alternative - that we're just in the great flow of capitalism and it can never be any different - that this is human destiny, this is human nature.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Destiny Quotes , Ideas Quotes