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
“All these skills I've taught you--they're burdens. Not gifts. Taking a life takes something from me. When you choose to kill, make sure it is for the right reasons. Make sure the decision is something you can live with.”
― Ryan Graudin, quote from Blood for Blood
“I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It's difficult to describe because it's an emotion. It's analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there's a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run "behind the scenes" by the same organization, the same physical laws. It's an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of nature, of how she works inside; a realization that the phenomena we see result from the complexity of the inner workings between atoms; a feeling of how dramatic and wonderful it is. It's a feeling of awe — of scientific awe — which I felt could be communicated through a drawing to someone who had also had this emotion. It could remind him, for a moment, of this feeling about the glories of the universe.”
― Richard Feynman, quote from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character
“The greater the force brought to bear, the older and wiser must be the entity who wields it. Wisdom allows sorrow. Age allows experience, and knowledge reinforces wisdom and experience … . “Those who would bear the burden of force must be those who are strong and do not seek it, for those who seek force would misuse it, and those who are weak would shy from what they must do … .”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., quote from The Parafaith War
“When you read the account of a murder - or, say, a fiction story based on murder - you usually begin with the murder itself. That's all wrong. The murder begins a long time beforehand. A murder is the culmination of a lot of different circumstances, all converging at a given moment at a given point. People are brought into it from different parts of the globe and for unforeseen reasons. [...] The murder itself is the end of the story. It's Zero Hour.”
He paused.
“It's Zero Hour now.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Towards Zero
“To be something abnormal meant that you were to serve the normal. And if you refused, they hated you... and often the normal hated you even when you did serve them.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, quote from Who Fears Death
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