Adrienne Rich Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Adrienne Rich

  Threat, Invitations

  121 Copy quote

• Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.

  Adrienne Rich

  Fall, Recovery, Rose

  86 Copy quote

• The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.

  Adrienne Rich

  Inspirational, Motivational, Feminist

  "The Last Poem I Loved: 'Modotti' by Adrienne Rich" by Laura Goode, therumpus.net. April 02, 2012.

  161 Copy quote

• The beauty of darkness
  is how it lets you see.

  Adrienne Rich

  Darkness

  Adrienne Rich (1995). “Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995”, p.53, W. W. Norton & Company

  77 Copy quote

• An honorable human relationship- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love"- is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
  It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.
  It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.
  It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

  Adrienne Rich

  Love, Self, Two

  Adrienne Rich (1995). “On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978”, p.104, W. W. Norton & Company

  158 Copy quote

• When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul--and not just individual strength, but collective understanding--to resist this void, this nonbeing, into which are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.

  Adrienne Rich

  Teacher, Mirrors, Individual Strength

  142 Copy quote

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

  Adrienne Rich

  Inspirational, Warrior, Down And

  Adrienne Rich (1993). “Your Native Land, Your Life”, p.22, W. W. Norton & Company

  114 Copy quote

• 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.

  Adrienne Rich

  Strong Women, Hard Work, Mean

  129 Copy quote

• The most notable fact that our culture imprints on women is a sense of our limits. The most important thing a woman can do for another is to illuminate her actual possibilities.

  Adrienne Rich

  Important, Culture, Limits

  57 Copy quote

• We must use what we have to invent what we desire.

  Adrienne Rich

  Success, Dream, Use It Or Lose It

  Adrienne Rich (2003). “What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)”, p.172, W. W. Norton & Company

  88 Copy quote

• All new learning looks at first like chaos.

  Adrienne Rich

  Looks, Firsts, Chaos

  Adrienne Rich (2011). “Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010: Poems 2007–2010”, p.80, W. W. Norton & Company

  10 Copy quote

• We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin.

  Adrienne Rich

  Children, New Relationship, Motherhood

  Adrienne Rich (1976). “Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution”

  111 Copy quote

• Language is power... Language can be used as a means of changing reality.

  Adrienne Rich

  Writing, Mean, Reality

  59 Copy quote

• 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.

  Adrienne Rich

  Inspirational, Believe, Moving

  Adrienne Rich (1994). “Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985”, p.65, W. W. Norton & Company

  59 Copy quote

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

  Adrienne Rich

  Feelings, Desire, Chamber

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  Adrienne Rich

  Peace, Ubuntu, People

  Adrienne Rich (1994). “Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985”, p.105, W. W. Norton & Company

  72 Copy quote

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

  Adrienne Rich

  Long, Optimism, Important

  11 Copy quote

• Lying is done with words and also with silence.

  Adrienne Rich

  Truth, Integrity, Liars

  Adrienne Rich (2002). “Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations”, p.20, W. W. Norton & Company

  26 Copy quote

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

  Adrienne Rich

  Mind, Body

  Adrienne Rich (1995). “Collected Early Poems: 1950-1970”, p.339, W. W. Norton & Company

  6 Copy quote

• A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.

  Adrienne Rich

  Sleep, Thinking, Monsters

  Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" l. 26 (1963)

  55 Copy quote

• My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.

  Adrienne Rich

  Heart, Age, World

  Adrienne Rich (2002). “The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems 1950-2001”, p.183, W. W. Norton & Company

  87 Copy quote

• To seek visions, to dream dreams, is essential, and it is also essential to try new ways of living, to make room for serious experimentation, to respect the effort even where it fails.

  Adrienne Rich

  Dream, Effort, Vision

  Adrienne Rich (1976). “Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution”

  12 Copy quote

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

  Adrienne Rich

  Art, Mean, Dinner Table

  Adrienne Rich (2016). “Collected Poems: 1950-2012”, p.36, W. W. Norton & Company

  54 Copy quote

• Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.

  Adrienne Rich

  Assumption, Knows

  62 Copy quote

• The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.

  Adrienne Rich

  Damage, Purpose, Done

  "Diving into the Wreck" l. 51 (1973)

  30 Copy quote

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