Adrienne Rich Quotes, Mean Quotes, Thinking Quotes

I think my work comes out of both an intense desire for connection and what it means to feel isolated. There's always going to be a kind of tidal movement back and forth between the two.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Mean Quotes , Thinking 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

When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you’re not in it, there’s a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Teacher Quotes , Mirrors Quotes

The moment of change is the only poem.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Change Quotes , Healing 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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The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can't afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life.

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The will to change begins in the body, not in the mind.

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The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Keys Quotes , Doors Quotes

Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted”, for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Reality Quotes , Mad Quotes

It is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.

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I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence -from "Splittings

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Re-vision -- the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction - is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Eye Quotes , Survival Quotes

Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Writing Quotes , Voice Quotes

Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, heavy with useless experience, rich with suspicion, rumour, fantasy, crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge of mere fact. In the prime of your life.

6 years ago

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Poetry can open locked chambers of possibiity, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire.

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Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler - for the liar - than it really is, or ought to be.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Liars Quotes , Lying Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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A patriot is one who wrestles for the soul of her country as she wrestles for her own being.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Country Quotes , Soul Quotes

I don't want to succumb to the idea that for the generation, or generations, raised on television, the text is irrelevant or so intimidating that they won't deal with it. If you teach, you see this is not true. It may be that newer generations do not worship the text as some of their elders do.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Ideas Quotes , Generations Quotes

I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Health Education Quotes