It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!' — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Nothing could have prepared me for the realization that I was a mother ... when I knew I was still in a… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
We are, none of us, 'either' mothers or daughters; to our amazement, confusion, and greater complexity, we are both. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
motherhood is the great mesh in which all human relations are entangled, in which lurk our most elemental assumptions about love and… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
How we dwelt in two worlds the daughters and the mothers in the kingdom of the sons. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
But before we were mothers, we have been, first of all, women, with actual bodies and actual minds. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
One does not give birth in a void, but rather in a cultural and political context. Laws, professional codes, religious sanctions, and… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
The worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Our personalities seem dangerously to blur and overlap with our mother's; and, in a desperate attempt to know where mother ends and… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Mothers and daughters have always exchanged with each other - beyond the verbally transmitted lore of female survival - a knowledge that… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Motherhood, in the sense of an intense, reciprocal relationship with a particular child, or children, is one part of female process; it… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
As her sons have seen her: the mother in patriarchy: controlling, erotic, castrating, heart-suffering, guilt-ridden, and guilt-provoking; a marble brow, a huge… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
But can you imagine how some of them were envying you your freedom to work, to think, to travel, to enter a… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Much male fear of feminism is the fear that, in becoming whole human beings, women will cease to mother men, to provide… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
What I search for continuously in my art is adequate language, language I hope can stand beyond any particular occasion. What I'm finding is… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
“Well, she's long about her coming, who must be more merciless to herself than history. Her mind full to the wind, I see her… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
I think my work comes out of both an intense desire for connection and what it means to feel isolated. There's always going to… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrotea letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!' — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
The women's movement appeared at a very crucial moment in my life. There was a whole political movement asking such questions and others I… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
The decision to feed the world is the real decision. No revolution has chosen it. For that choice requires that women shall be free. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
I think many poets, including myself, write both for the voice and for the page. I certainly write for the person alone in the… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
If I cling to circumstances I could feel not responsible. Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
