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Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich Quotes

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Famous Adrienne Rich Quotes

“... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal,that we can understand our past through a male lens--if we are unaware that women even have a history--we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.”

IfsPhilosophyPastAcceptingHistoryOur LivesWindUniversalResponseMalesDefinitionsMythBiasOur PastLensesDrifting
Book:Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985
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“No one ever told us we had to study our lives,make of our lives a study, as if learning natural historyor music, that we should beginwith the simple exercises firstand slowly go on tryingthe hard ones, practicing till strengthand accuracy became one with the daringto leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down in the wild arpeggioor faulting the full sentence of the fugue.”

IfsShouldHardNaturalChanceSimpleStudyOur LivesGoes OnExerciseSentencesLeapBreaking DownTranscendenceAccuracyFugue
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“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.”

IfsThinkingWantGivingShouldTryingPersonsStillsEndsLawSufferingSpeakResponsibilityIdentityStrangeShould HaveDown AndAngryWarriorTaking Responsibility
Book:Your Native Land, Your Life
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“To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife, the physical sensations of your ordinary carnal life; and simultaneously, to allow what you're reading to pierce routines, safe and impermeable, in which ordinary carnal life is tracked, charted, channeled. Then, what of the right answers, the so-called multiple-choice examination sheet with the number 2 pencil to mark one choice and one choice only?”

IfsMeanLife IsChoicesReadingBeliefAnswersNumbersSafeOrdinaryMarkSensationsMultipleSheetsPencilsExaminationPierceRight AnswersSwirlsMultiple ChoiceNumber 2
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence-- words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.”

IfsKnowsWritingDreamOrderMemoriesBehindsSilenceNeededScreensChalkboards
Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)
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“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?”

IfsWayHumansArtDesireLostHuman BeingsGriefBehindsExistenceElementsArt IsAngryLove LifeDesire Love
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“Each feminist work has tended to be received as if it emerged from nowhere; as if each one of us had lived, thought, and worked without any historical past or contextual present. This is one of the ways in which women's work and thinking has been made to seem sporadic, errant, orphaned of any tradition of its own.”

IfsThinkingWayHas BeensMadeSeemsPastJusticeDiversityTraditionSocial JusticeHistoricalFeministSporadic
Book:On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
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“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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“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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