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It is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.

Adrienne Rich

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Adrienne Rich
Age: 82 †
Born: 1929
Born: May 16
Died: 2012
Died: March 27
Essayist
Feminist
Peace Activist
Poet
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Adrienne Cecile Rich
Adrienne Cécile Rich
Adrienne Riche
Possess
Optimism
Short
Term
Important
Long
Pessimism

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The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.
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I wanted him [my father] to cherish and approve of me, not as he had when I was a child, but as the woman I was, who had her own mind and had made her own choices.
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These scars bear witness but whether to repair or to destruction I no longer know.
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I've had to guess at her, sewing her skin together as I sew mine, though with a different stitch
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Sexist grammar burns into the brains of little girls and young women a message that the male is the norm, the standard, the central figure beside which we are all deviants, the marginal, the dependent variables. It lays the foundation for androcentric thinking, and leaves men safe in their solipsistic tunnel-vision.
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All new learning looks at first like chaos.
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We are, none of us, 'either' mothers or daughters to our amazement, confusion, and greater complexity, we are both.
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Pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling.
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The moment when a feeling enters the body/ is political. This touch is political
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Experience is always larger than language.
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In order to live a fully human life we require not only control of our bodies (though control is a prerequisite) we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the natural order, the corporeal grounds of our intelligence.
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...you look at me like an emergency
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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.
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Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.
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We must use what we have to invent what we desire.
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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.
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Life on the planet is born of woman.
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... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.
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I don't trust them but I'm learning to use them.
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The moment of change is the only poem.
Adrienne Rich