Adrienne Rich Quotes, Children Quotes, Father Quotes

I wanted him [my father] to cherish and approve of me, not as he had when I was a child, but as the woman I was, who had her own mind and had made her own choices.

6 years ago

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But before we were mothers, we have been, first of all, women, with actual bodies and actual minds.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Mother Quotes , Mind Quotes

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

Can individual psychic wounds really heal in an abusive and fragmented society? Audre Lorde has a poem which begins, "What do we want from each other/ after we have told our stories?" Where do we go to explore our stake with others in such a society?

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Psychics Quotes , Stories Quotes

It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath It will be short, it will not be simple

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Heart Quotes , Simple Quotes

The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Mother Quotes , Children Quotes

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

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Abortion Quotes , Violence 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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Peace Quotes , Ubuntu 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

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

Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we're not alone in the universe, even in sleep.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Sleep Quotes , Midnight Quotes

What we see, we see and seeing is changing

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White hate crimes, white hate speech. I still try to claim I wasn't brought up to hate. But hate isn't the half of it. I grew up in the vast encircling presumption of whiteness - that primary quality of being which knows itself, its passions, only against an otherness that has to be dehumanized. I grew up in white silence that was utterly obsessional. Race was the theme whatever the topic.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Hate Quotes , Passion Quotes

Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, heavy with useless experience, rich with suspicion, rumour, fantasy, crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge of mere fact. In the prime of your life.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Knives Quotes , Cake Quotes

We can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , People Quotes , Way Quotes

I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something - a great deal - to do with how we live our lives.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Believe 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.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Art Quotes , Reading Quotes

Life on the planet is born of woman.

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

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Eye Quotes , Survival Quotes

My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.

6 years ago

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Children Quotes , Feelings Quotes

You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.

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Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Writing Quotes