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Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich Quotes

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Famous Adrienne Rich Quotes

“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.”

IfsThinkingWorldNeedsHumansChildrenBodyUniverseCommunityExistenceVisionImagineGeniusBalanceIndependenceSexualityMotherhoodIntimacyTransformedNew LifeHuman ExistenceConsoleOnly ChildIfs AndNew Relationship
Book:Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution
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“There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.”

KindArtInspirationArtistSongForceViewsStruggleBloodHigherConcernUniversalRelationAssumingPrivilegePossessionLocalsBreadTemporaryMysticalDisturbance
Book:Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985
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“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.”

IfsKnowsWorldSoulMomentsGamesIndividualUnderstandingSawsTeacherHeardFeminismLike YouAuthorityMirrorsCollectivesVoidPsychicsThrustIndividual StrengthDisequilibrium
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“The ocean, whose tides respond, like women's menses, to the pull of the moon, the ocean which corresponds to the amniotic fluid in which human life begins, the ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves... it is unstable and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives; it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal.”

HumansEarthMoonOceanEternalFemaleDepthSurfaceMonstersHuman LifeDaily LifeTidesThreateningNew LifeVesselFluidSailorUnstableIndestructibleSpawn
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“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.”

MenTryingStillsPoliticalLyingPoliticsHonorPoliticianAssumingStatementsCodeIndifferenceCracksContemptExpectingInherentAccustomedScandalHigh Places
Book:Women and honor: some notes on lying
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