88 Memorable Quotes By Adrienne Rich, The Author Of Diving Into The Wreck
Adrienne Cecile Rich was a vocal feminist, poet and essayist from the United States, who became one of the most well-known poets of the latter part of the 20th century and has also been credited for being one of the most influential voices on feminism during her time. She studied at Radcliffe College and then went to Oxford University on a Guggenheim Fellowship but she did not complete her course. Rich’s first book of poetry collections titled ‘A Change of the World’ received plaudits and she got the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for the book. Some of her noted works include ‘The Dream of a Common Language’, ‘Diving Into the Wreck’, ‘Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law’, ‘A Wild Patience Has Taken Me this Far’ and ‘An Atlas of the Difficult World’, among others. On the other hand, she has also written a bit of non-fiction on issues about which she felt strongly. Some of the important ones are ‘Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose’, ‘Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution’ and 'On Lies, Secrets and Silence’ among others. Rich was one of the most important intellectuals of her time and her books are still read all over the world due to their literary richness. Here are some of the best quotes by Adrienne Rich.
There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.
Lying is done with words, and also with silence.
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.
You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.
When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.
I keep coming back to you in my head, but you couldn't know that, and I have no carbons
I feel more helpless with you than without you.
No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city.
Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.
![[Poetry] is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.](https://www.wisdomly.net/images/quotes/adrienne-rich-655.jpg)
[Poetry] is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.
If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.
My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.
I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow, and somehow, each of us will help the other live, and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.
It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath It will be short, it will not be simple
The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.
I don't trust them but I'm learning to use them.
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.
...you look at me like an emergency
A thinking woman sleeps with monsters that beak which grips her, she becomes.
If you think you can grasp me, think again: my story flows in more than one direction a delta springing from the riverbed with its five fingers spread
War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.
The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.
Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we're not alone in the universe, even in sleep.
I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence -from "Splittings
The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can't afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life.
Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
The moment of change is the only poem.
I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.
Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don't know you know.
