Adrienne Rich Quotes, Unseen Quotes, Looks Quotes

There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Unseen Quotes , Looks Quotes

A life I didn't choose chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Life Quotes

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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , White Quotes , People Quotes

I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Mind Quotes , Trying Quotes

War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Country Quotes , War Quotes

No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Passion Quotes , Animal Quotes

I think about the possibilities for empathy, for mutual solidarity among gay men and lesbians, not simply as people who suffer under homophobia, but as people who are also extremely creative, active, and have a particular understanding of the human condition.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Gay Quotes , Men Quotes

... people are growing up in the slack flicker of a pale light which lacks the concentrated burn of a candle flame or oil wick or the bulb of a gooseneck desk lamp: a pale, wavering, oblong shimmer, emitting incessant noise, which is to real knowledge or discourse what the manic or weepy protestations of a drunk are to responsible speech. Drunks do have a way of holding an audience, though, and so does the shimmery ill-focused oblong screen.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

In this disintegrative, technologically-manic time, when public language is so debased, poetry continues to matter because it's the art that reintegrates words, speech, voice, breath, music, bodily tempo, and the powers of the imagination.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Art Quotes , Voice Quotes

Life on the planet is born of woman.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Inspirational Life Quotes , Rich Life Quotes

The password is a flicker of an eyelash.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Eyelashes Quotes , Passwords Quotes

We might possess every technological resource... but if our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be 'revolutionary' but not transformative.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Running Quotes , Thinking Quotes

We have seen over and over that white male historians in general have tended to dismiss any history they didn't themselves write,on the grounds that it is unserious, unscholarly, a fad, too "political," "merely" oral and thus unreliable.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Writing Quotes , White 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

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Struggle Quotes , Imagination Quotes

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Strong Women Quotes , Hard Work Quotes

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

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

I feel more helpless with you than without you.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Without You Quotes , Feels Quotes

To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence-- words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Dream Quotes , Memories Quotes

Poetry reaches into places in us that we are suppose to ignore or mistrust, that are perceived as subversive or non-useful, in what is fast becoming known as global culture.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Culture Quotes , Becoming Quotes

I've had to guess at her, sewing her skin together as I sew mine, though with a different stitch

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Skins Quotes , Together Quotes