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Your Native Land, Your Life

Book by Adrienne Rich · 20 quotes · Poetry, Poem, Life

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Your Native Land, Your Life Quotes

“That's why I want to speak to you now. To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.) I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then, and perhaps there is none now; but we will have to make it, we who want an end to suffering, who want to change the laws of history, if we are not to give ourselves away.”

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“It's true, these last few years I've lived watching myself in the act of loss—the art of losing, Elizabeth Bishop called it, but for me no art only badly-done exercises acts of the heart forced to question its presumptions in this world its mere excitements acts of the body forced to measure all instincts against pain acts of parting trying to let go without giving up yes Elizabeth a city here a village there a sister, comrade, cat and more no art to this but anger”

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“Look: this is January the worst onslaught is ahead of us Don't be lured by these soft grey afternoons these sunsets cut from pink and violet tissue-paper by the thought the days are lengthening Don't let the solstice fool you: our lives will always be a stew of contradictions the worst moment of winter can come in April when the peepers are stubbornly still and our bodies plod on without conviction and our thoughts cramp down before the sheer arsenal of everything that tries us: this battering, blunt-edged life”

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