Adrienne Rich Quotes, Lying Quotes, Men 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

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Lying Quotes , Men Quotes

The kind of poetry that interests me is intellectual and moral and political and sexual and sensual - all of that fermenting together. It can speak to people who have themselves felt like monsters and say: you are not alone, this is not monstrous. It can disturb and enrapture.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , People Quotes , Political Quotes

I think many poets, including myself, write both for the voice and for the page. I certainly write for the person alone in the library, who pulls down a book and it opens to a poem. I am also very conscious of what it means to read these poems aloud.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Book Quotes , Writing Quotes

There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Warrior Quotes

Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other. The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Two Quotes , Giving 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

The longer I live the more I mistrust theatricality, the false glamour cast by performance, the more I know its poverty beside the truths we are salvaging from the splitting-open of our lives. -from "Transcendental Etude

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Poverty Quotes , Transcendental Quotes

Poetry can open locked chambers of possibiity, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Feelings Quotes , Desire Quotes

It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Suffering Quotes , Nerves Quotes

A language is a map of our failures

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Maps Quotes

... this world gives no room to be what we dreamt of being

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Giving Quotes , World 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

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Children Quotes , Father Quotes

We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Greed Quotes , May Quotes

It is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Long Quotes , Optimism Quotes

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

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , People Quotes , Way 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

...you look at me like an emergency

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Looks Quotes , Emergencies 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

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Self Quotes , Numbness Quotes

What would it mean to live in a city whose people were changing each other's despair into hope?-- You yourself must change it.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Hope Quotes , Mean Quotes

I guess what concerns me always is the need for a field, a rich compost, for any art to flourish. But however isolate or unheard you may feel, if you have the need to write poetry, are compelled to write it, you go on, whether there is resonance or not.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Art Quotes , Writing Quotes