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Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich Quotes

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Famous Adrienne Rich Quotes

“I am suspicious - first of all, in myself - of adopted mysticisms of glib spirituality, above all of white people's tendency to ... vampirize American Indian, or African, or Asian, or other 'exotic' ways of understanding.”

PeopleWayFirstsCultureSpiritualityUnderstandingWhiteTendenciesIndianMysticismAdoptedAsianSuspiciousExoticAmerican Indian
Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)
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“... people are growing up in the slack flicker of a pale light which lacks the concentrated burn of a candle flame or oil wick or the bulb of a gooseneck desk lamp: a pale, wavering, oblong shimmer, emitting incessant noise, which is to real knowledge or discourse what the manic or weepy protestations of a drunk are to responsible speech. Drunks do have a way of holding an audience, though, and so does the shimmery ill-focused oblong screen.”

PeopleWayDoeRealLightAudienceGrowing UpGrowingSpeechResponsibleIllFocusedOilScreensNoiseDrunkFlamesCandlePaleDesksDiscourseLampsBulbsManicIncessantFlickerWaveringShimmerReal Knowledge
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“Poetry has always mattered, through human history, through all kinds of cultures, all kinds of violence and human desolation, as well as periods of great human affirmation. It's been associated with the power of the word, with the sacred, with magic and transformation, with the oral narratives that help a people cohere.”

PeopleHumansWellsKindHelpingCultureViolenceMagicPeriodsTransformationSacredAll KindsNarrativeAffirmationHuman HistoryDesolation
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“We've learned a lot from the great psychologists. Wilhelm Reich wrote about the relationship between fascism and sexual repression. Freud rediscovered the underworld of consciousness that European rationalism had denied. But when you have a nation of people in therapy and counselling, "support" groups for every kind of human condition, where, in the clichés of that milieu, people "share" and "heal," the question, "What for?", "What now?" is no longer asked.”

PeopleHumansKindNationsConsciousnessSupportGroupsShareConditionsHealTherapyFascismDeniedHuman ConditionRepressionPsychologistRationalismUnderworldMilieuSupport Groups
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“In a society where some people are far more educated than others, in which public education is ill-funded - here I am speaking of the U.S. - while we build more and more prisons to incarcerate youth who ought to be in school, there is already a gap between those with education and those without. Those with educational privilege can be seen as arrogant, remote, alien - and very often they believe themselves superior.”

PeopleBelieveSchoolYouthOughtPrisonIllPrivilegeEducationalSuperiorsEducatedAliensGapsArrogantHere I AmPublic EducationPeaking
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“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.”

PeopleWayLoveHumansPersonsTwoImportantSelfHardUseProcessJusticeLove IsBreakInvolvedViolentComplexityIsolationDelusionDelicateHonorableBreaking DownHuman RelationsHuman RelationshipsHard WayRefiningSelf DelusionWords Love
Book:On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
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