Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events. Adrienne Rich
The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those who still believe that language is ‘only words’ and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform. Adrienne Rich
The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To ‘see the light’ too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness. Adrienne Rich
Women have been the truly active people in all cultures, without whom human society would long ago have perished, though our activity has most often been on the behalf of men and children. Adrienne Rich
False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news. Adrienne Rich
There are days when housework seems the only outlet. Adrienne Rich
Pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling. Adrienne Rich
Women’s Studies can amount simply to compensatory history; too often they fail to challenge the intellectual and political structures that must be challenged if women as a group are ever to come into collective, nonexclusionary freedom. Adrienne Rich
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. Adrienne Rich