Adrienne Rich Quotes & Sayings

“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.”

“Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.”

“Lying is done with words and also with silence.”

“A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize. It reminds you... where and when and how you are living and might live, it is a wick of desire.”

“Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.”

“The moment of change is the only poem.”

“Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.”

“When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”

“The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.”

“We might possess every technological resource... but if our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be 'revolutionary' but not transformative.”