Adrienne Rich Quotes, Art Quotes, Reading Quotes

You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Art Quotes , Reading 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.

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The liar leads an existence of unutterable loneliness.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Loneliness Quotes , Liars 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

It's exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Time Quotes

In order to live a fully human life we require not only control of our bodies (though control is a prerequisite); we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the natural order, the corporeal grounds of our intelligence.

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

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Daughter Quotes , Father Quotes

There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice...In the end, I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Country Quotes , Art 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

The channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Song Quotes , Art 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

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Life Quotes , Respect Quotes

Much male fear of feminism is the fear that, in becoming whole human beings, women will cease to mother men, to provide the breast, the lullaby, the continuous attention associated by the infant with the mother. Much male fear of feminism is infantilism–the longing to remain the mother’s son, to possess a woman who exists purely for him.

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Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness

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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 more I live, the more I think, two people together is a miracle.

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I don't trust them but I'm learning to use them.

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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.

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

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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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Peace Quotes , Ubuntu Quotes

There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Song Quotes , Art Quotes