Adrienne Rich - Child Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

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I'm accused of child-death of drinking blood…
there is spit on my sleeve there are phonecalls in the night…

Adrienne Rich
I am the androgyne, I am the living mind you fail to describe in your dead language the lost noun, the verb surviving only in the infinitive the letters of my name are written under the lids of the newborn child

Adrienne Rich
Motherhood, in the sense of an intense, reciprocal relationship with a particular child, or children, is one part of female process; it is not an identity for all time.

Adrienne Rich
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'

Adrienne Rich
Women have always been seen as waiting: waited to be asked, waiting for our menses, in fear lest they do or do not come, waiting for men to come home from wars, or from work, waiting for children to grow up, or for the birth of a new child, or for menopause.

Adrienne Rich
The mother's battle for her child — with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life — needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.

Adrienne Rich
Even where love has run thin the child's soul musters strength... the rush of purpose to make a life worth living past abandonment building the layers up again over the torn hole.

Adrienne Rich