Adrienne Rich Quotes, Life Quotes, Respect 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

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Life Quotes , Respect Quotes

It is the lesbian in us who is creative, for the dutiful daughter of the fathers in us is only a hack.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Daughter Quotes , Father Quotes

There is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women's bodies by men. The woman's body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Men Quotes , Body Quotes

I am the androgyne, I am the living mind you fail to describe in your dead language the lost noun, the verb surviving only in the infinitive the letters of my name are written under the lids of the newborn child

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Children Quotes , Newborn Child Quotes

When someone, let's say a teacher, speaks of the world and you are not in it, it's like looking into the mirror and seeing nothing.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Teacher Quotes , Mirrors Quotes

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

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

Abortion is violence; a deep, desperate violence inflicted by a woman upon, first of all, herself.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Abortion Quotes , Violence Quotes

Women have always been seen as waiting: waited to be asked, waiting for our menses, in fear lest they do or do not come, waiting for men to come home from wars, or from work, waiting for children to grow up, or for the birth of a new child, or for menopause.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Children Quotes , Growing Up Quotes

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

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Passion Quotes , Mind Quotes

...you look at me like an emergency

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Looks Quotes , Emergencies Quotes

No one ever told us we had to study our lives,make of our lives a study, as if learning natural historyor music, that we should beginwith the simple exercises firstand slowly go on tryingthe hard ones, practicing till strengthand accuracy became one with the daringto leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down in the wild arpeggioor faulting the full sentence of the fugue.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Exercise Quotes , Simple Quotes

In the interstices of language lie powerful secrets of the culture.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Powerful Quotes , Lying 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

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Risk Quotes , Survival Quotes