Muriel Rukeyser Quotes

Quotes about:

• What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Truth, World, Splits

  "Käthe Kollwitz" sec. 3, l. 25 (1968)

  52 Copy quote

• The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Peace, Science, Technology

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.135, Northwestern University Press

  25 Copy quote

• If we look long enough and hard enough ... we will begin to see the connections that bind us together, and when we recognize those connections, we will begin to change the world.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Long, Together, Connections

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• However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Confused, Goes On, May

  "The Life of Poetry". Book by Muriel Rukeyser. Chapter One: "The Fear of Poetry", 1949.

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• As we live our truths, we will communicate across all barriers, speaking for the sources of peace. Peace that is not lack of war, but fierce and positive.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  War, Fierce, Source

  Muriel Rukeyser, Janet E. Kaufman, Anne F. Herzog, Jan Heller Levi (2005). “The collected poems of Muriel Rukeyser”, Univ of Pittsburgh Pr

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• My lifetime listens to yours.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Love, Marriage, Lifetime

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.129, Northwestern University Press

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• In time of crisis, we summon up our strength. Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Memories, Self, Long

  "The Life of Poetry". Book by Muriel Rukeyser. Introduction, 1949.

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• The 'idea' for the poem, which may come as an image thrown against memory, as a sound of words that sets off a traveling of sound and meaning, as a curve of emotion (a form) plotted by certain crises of events or image or sound, or as a title which evokes a sense of inner relations; this is the first 'surfacing' of the poem. Then a period of stillness may follow.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Memories, Ideas, Curves

  7 Copy quote

• What three things can never be done? / Forget. Keep silent. Stand alone

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Three, Done, Forget

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.37, Northwestern University Press

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• Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  New Beginnings, Blessing, All Things

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.105, Northwestern University Press

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• dogma and shrinking from the external world are at one limit of the range of belief. At the other are science and poetry and, indeed, reality.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Reality, Shrinking, World

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• Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Peace, War, Women

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• The journey is my home.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Travel, Home, Journey

  Muriel Rukeyser (1957). “One Life”, New York : Simon and Schuster

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• Reality is the completion of experience.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Reality, Completion

  "The Life of Poetry". Book by Muriel Rukeyser, p. 221, 1949.

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• The universe of poetry is the universe of emotional truth. Our material is in the way we feel and the way we remember.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Emotional, Poetry, Way

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• Never to despise in myself what I have been taught
  to despise. Nor to despise the other.
  Not to despise the it. To make this relation
  with the it: to know that I am it.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Tolerance, Taught, Despise

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.138, Northwestern University Press

  8 Copy quote

• Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Poetry, Poetic, Breathe

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.1, Northwestern University Press

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• If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Poetry, Would Be, World

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• American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict....We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the idea of perpetual warfare

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Ideas, People, Democracy

  Muriel Rukeyser (2004). “Selected Poems”

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• I think there is a choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Fall, Sacrifice, Thinking

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• A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Art, Giving, Able

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• Outrage and possibility are in all the poems we know.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Poetry, Possibility, Outrage

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• Let us not fear the hidden. Or each other.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Fear

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.62, Northwestern University Press

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• The world is made up of Stories, not Atoms.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Atoms, Stories, World

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• Exchange is creation.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Creation

  3 Copy quote

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