Rich, Adrienne

"Patriarchy is a system where women are controlled, but also where men are imprisoned in roles."

"The suppression of women is a suppression of the truth about human experience itself."

"I have come to realize that women are the real measure of a civilized society."

"When I look at myself as a writer, I see a woman committed to change through language."

"A woman's body is a battlefield and a sanctuary simultaneously."

"The privilege of knowing that you can be yourself is not universally granted."

"There is a commonness in women's experience that connects us across centuries and continents."

"Art is not a product of solitude, but of community and conversation."

"The politics of women's oppression is lived as personal anguish in the body."

"If we stop defining ourselves by what we are not, we begin to live."

"Anger is an appropriate response to racist attitudes, even those embedded in institutions."

"A child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth."

"We are never as alone as we think, and never as separate as the world would make us believe."

"Language is power, but it is also limitation; we must always be aware of what it cannot say."

"The love between women is often unseen because it has been made invisible by centuries of denial."

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle, but she is also like a sky without a ceiling."

"When we speak of women's liberation, we are speaking of human liberation."

"The family is not a biological unit, but a unit of meaning and connection."

"Silence equals death, but also, speech without consciousness equals noise."

"I write from my body, my sexuality, my history, my present; I cannot separate these from my work."

"We need to imagine and define ourselves, not as the other defines us."

"The act of writing is political, whether we acknowledge it or not."

"A woman's anger is not a luxury; it is a necessity and a gift."

"We are separated from each other not by differences but by the denial of our sameness."

"The body keeps the score, and that score is written in language we are only beginning to read."

"If I can't dance in your revolution, it's not my revolution."

"Women have historically been confined to the private sphere, but our lives are inherently political."

"The myths we are taught about ourselves become the prisons we build."

"A woman who writes has taken the first step in claiming her power."