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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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“We see daily that our lives are terrible and little, without continuity, buyable and salable at any moment, mere blips on a screen, that this is the way we live now. Memory marketed as nostalgia; terror reduced to mere suspense, to melodrama.”

WayLifeLittlesMomentsMemoriesOur LivesTerribleMereTerrorScreensNostalgiaSuspenseContinuityMelodrama
Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)
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“I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines. Spaces within a line, double colons, slashes, are indications of pause, of breath, of urgency, they are not metrically exact as in a musical notation but they serve (I hope) to make the reader think about the sound of the poem - just as traffic symbols, when driving, make us almost unconsciously aware of a steep hill, an intersection, an icy bridge etc.”

ThinkingWayLongSoundLinesSpaceReaderBreathsMusicalDrivingSymbolsHillsBridgesEtcTrafficPausesUrgencyIndicationSteepIcyIntersectionsLong Lines
Author:Adrienne Rich
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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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“The difficulty of saying I-a phrase from the East German novelist Christa Wolf. But once having said it, as we realize the necessity to go further, isn't there a difficulty of saying 'we'? You cannot speak for me. I cannot speak for you. Two thoughts: there is no liberation that only knows how to say 'I'; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through.”

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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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