Adrienne Rich Quotes, Art Quotes, Mean Quotes

Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Art Quotes , Mean 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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Mother Quotes , Children Quotes

We who were loved will never unlive that crippling fever.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Love Quotes

The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those who still believe that language is 'only words' and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Believe Quotes , Poetry Quotes

If we had time and no money, living by our wits, what story would you tell?

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Stories Quotes , Wit 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

Love, our subject: we've trained it like ivy to our walls.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Wall Quotes , Ivy Quotes

The [Vietnam War Memorial] Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Wall Quotes , War 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

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

Change is not a threat to your life, but an invitation to live.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Threat Quotes

In a world where language and naming are power, silence is oppression, is violence.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Silence Quotes , World Quotes

In 1945, just at the end of World War II, the American poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote a remarkable book called The Life of Poetry. In it she says that on any particular day in the world, if poetry ceased to exist, it would immediately be reinvented on that same day.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , War Quotes , Book Quotes

The vixen I met at twilight on Route 5 south of Willoughby: long dead. She was an omen to me, surviving, herding her cubs in the silvery bend of the road in nineteen sixty-five.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Twilight Quotes , Long Quotes

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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Gay Quotes , Talking Quotes

Poetry can add its grain to an accumulation of consciousness against the idea that there is no alternative - that we're just in the great flow of capitalism and it can never be any different - that this is human destiny, this is human nature.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Destiny Quotes , Ideas Quotes

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

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Use 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?

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Art Quotes , Grief 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

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

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Adrienne Rich Quotes , Mother Quotes , Mind Quotes