Adrienne Rich Quotes, Death Quotes, Suicide Quotes

They can rule the world while they can persuade us our pain belongs in some order is death by famine worse than death by suicide, than a life of famine and suicide...?

4 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Death Quotes , Suicide 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.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Daughter Quotes , Mother Quotes

We are, none of us, 'either' mothers or daughters; to our amazement, confusion, and greater complexity, we are both.

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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.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Mother Quotes , Heart Quotes

"Global culture" is of course not a culture: it's the global marketing and imposing of commodities and images for the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

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Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

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... passion for survival is the great theme of women's poetry.

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

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I am suspicious - first of all, in myself - of adopted mysticisms of glib spirituality, above all of white people's tendency to ... vampirize American Indian, or African, or Asian, or other 'exotic' ways of understanding.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , White Quotes , People 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.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Heart Quotes , Age Quotes

If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Peace Quotes , Ubuntu 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.

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

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Lying is done with words and also with silence.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Truth Quotes , Integrity Quotes

What I search for continuously in my art is adequate language, language I hope can stand beyond any particular occasion. What I'm finding is that in our increasingly dysfunctional U.S. society, marvelous poetry is being written - out of and amid the dysfunction.

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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.

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Strangers are an endangered species.

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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.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Gay Quotes , Talking Quotes

Behind all art is an element of desire...Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art — even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?

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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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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Artist Quotes , Self Quotes