Rich, Adrienne

"If I could have one wish for my own sons, it would be that they should have the courage of women."

"The woman who is stranded in domestic space—is not a woman."

"A wild patience has taken me this far."

"We are, none of us, 'characters' in the old sense, nor symbols but presences."

"The universe of languages, of images, and of symbols co-exists with material reality."

"What we see depends almost entirely on what we are taught to look for."

"The work of transformation lies within ourselves."

"To be a lesbian is to be a woman-identified woman."

"The poem enters us through the cells and the blood."

"We must imagine human life as genuinely free."

"I don't think of myself as an American writer but rather as a woman writer."

"The eye of the beholder is also the eye of the builder."

"Grief has a value in a culture which does not admit the depths of women's existence."

"How shall the heart learn unless the mind instructs the heart?"

"The danger lies not in the dream itself but in our inability to acknowledge it."

"We're all afraid of different things, but our fear is a common language."

"Language is power, and language is the instrument of consciousness."

"There is no surer way to obliterate a voice than to speak it."

"Patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence."

"The personal is political."

"We can move beyond the circumstances we find ourselves in."

"Every moment is new; the past is finished unless we insist on dragging it forward."

"The refusal to feel takes a terrible toll on the psyche and on our ability to love."

"Writing is an act of faith in the readers."

"A new language means a new life."

"We are caught in a patriarchal form of consciousness."

"The woman who doesn't feel torn in different directions is probably trying to feel nothing."

"There is no truth that isn't also a perspective."

"Words like freedom, justice, democracy are not common words or easy words."

"A feminist is any person who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men."