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

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Lying Quotes , Men Quotes

To seek visions, to dream dreams, is essential, and it is also essential to try new ways of living, to make room for serious experimentation, to respect the effort even where it fails.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Dream Quotes , Effort Quotes

But nothing less than the most radical imagination will carry us beyond this place, beyond the mere struggle for survival, to that lucid recognition of our possibilities which will keep us impatient, and unresigned to mere survival.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Struggle Quotes , Imagination Quotes

That's why I want to speak to you now. To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.) I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then, 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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Responsibility Quotes , Warrior Quotes

Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Rejection Quotes , Males Quotes

Most women have not even been able to touch this anger, except to drive it inward like a rusted nail.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Nails Quotes , Inward 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

I keep coming back to you in my head, but you couldn't know that, and I have no carbons.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , I Miss You Quotes , Missing You Quotes

Any woman's death diminishes me.

6 years ago

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Writers matter in a society to the extent that we can help that society hear its unvoiced longing, encounter its erased and disregarded selves, break with complacency, numbness, despair.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Self Quotes , Numbness Quotes

False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , New Day Quotes , Historical Quotes

The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Truth Quotes , Want Something Quotes