Adrienne Rich · 358 pages
Rating: (2.8K votes)
“Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we're not alone in the universe, even in sleep.”
“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.”
“A language is a map of our failures”
“We lie under the sheet
after making love, speaking
of loneliness
relieved in a book
relived in a book
so on that page
the clot and fissure
of it appears
words of a man
in pain
a naked word
entering the clot
a hand grasping
through bars:
deliverance
What happens between us
has happened for centuries
we know it from literature
still it happens
sexual jealousy
outflung hand
beating bed
dryness of mouth
after panting
there are books that describe all this
and they are useless”
“A dream of tenderness
wrestles with all I know of history”
“I'm going to the bathroom, not to Beirut. What horrible fate do you think's waiting for me in there? Death by toilet swirly?”
“Having sex is all trust. You can’t take it back once you do it, and it leaves you completely emotionally vulnerable.”
“No one had ever called her wild before. She wanted to be wild now, for him. Wild seemed more enticing then a bowl of berries.”
“If you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable.”
“Ci andavamo per ogni nostro bisogno. Quando avevamo sete, naturalmente, e fame, e quand’eravamo stanchi morti. Ci andavamo se eravamo felici, per festeggiare, e quand’eravamo tristi, per tenere il broncio. Ci andavamo dopo i matrimoni e i funerali, a prendere qualcosa per calmarci i nervi, e appena prima, per farci coraggio. Ci andavamo quando non sapevamo di cos’avevamo bisogno, ne la speranza che qualcuno ce lo dicesse. Ci andavamo in cerca d’amore, o di sesso, o di guai, o di qualcuno che era sparito, perché prima o poi capitava lì. Ci andavamo soprattutto quando avevamo bisogno di essere ritrovati.”
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