Quotes from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984

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.”
― Adrienne Rich, quote from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984


“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.”
― Adrienne Rich, quote from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984


“A language is a map of our failures”
― Adrienne Rich, quote from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984


“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”
― Adrienne Rich, quote from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984


“A dream of tenderness
wrestles with all I know of history”
― Adrienne Rich, quote from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984



About the author

Adrienne Rich
Born place: in Baltimore, Maryland, The United States
Born date May 16, 1929
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“For a moment we knew what it felt like to be free.”
― Suzanne Young, quote from The Treatment


“You’re going to get it. You’ll get it how I say. Like I say. When I say, Scribbler. I am Jeramiah Poe. Muse Rider – Diviner of Destinies… and you are my Muse.” ~Jeramiah Poe~”
― Lucian Bane, quote from The Scribbler Guardian


“Or maybe girls are supposed to find their soul mates in their friends, and guys are just there for the D. After”
― Amo Jones, quote from The Silver Swan


“all my life I have never heard a mother call out to her child as he or she goes off to school, “Take a lot of risks today, darling.” She is more likely to convey to her child, “Be careful, darling.” This “Be careful” carries with it a double message: “The world is really dangerous out there” … and … “you won’t be able to handle it.” What Mom is really saying, of course, is, “If something happens to you, I won’t be able to handle it.” You see, she is only passing on her lack of trust in her ability to handle what comes her way.”
― Susan Jeffers, quote from Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway


“The louder the babies screamed, the brighter the lights.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed


Interesting books

Divine Justice
(41K)
Divine Justice
by David Baldacci
For the Love of a Vampire
(6.8K)
For the Love of a Va...
by Michelle Leighton
Runaway
(3.7K)
Runaway
by Wendelin Van Draanen
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him: The Pilgrimage Of Psychotherapy Patients
(1.9K)
The Gum Thief
(9.4K)
The Gum Thief
by Douglas Coupland
The Yoga Sutras
(5.9K)
The Yoga Sutras
by Patañjali

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.