Adrienne Rich Quotes

The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.

To me, words are like stickpins. I can throw a word at you and it will bounce right off your body. But if I take that little stickpin and wire it to the back of an iron bar called human emotion, I can put that thing right through your heart.

There's a power in words. There's a power in being able to explain and describe and articulate what you know and feel and believe about the world, and about yourself.

We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has.

One of the other things I think that I've been able to do in my life, is to listen well.

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

The right word fitly spoken is a precious rarity.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust, not in the right argument, but in the right word.

He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.

People do stupid things... words are important.

Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable, nothing so rough and uncultured as not to gain brilliance and refinement from eloquence.

The tongue is a powerful tool. And the words we say are never forgotten. Never.

The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . . I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance - the revolt of the soul against the intellect.

I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the "growth" of man. Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, union that allows one to put oneself into relationship with others, to feel one with others, without limiting the sense of integrity and independence. Love is a productive orientation for which it is essential that there be present at the same time: concern, responsibility, and respect for and knowledge of the object of the union.

One word is worth a thousand pictures. If it's the right word.

The turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship, and, for aught that we know, the fate of many a kingdom.

Words are sacred. If you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge the world a little.

Words can do wonderful things. They pound, purr. They can urge, they can wheedle, whip, whine. They can sing, sass, singe. They can churn, check, channelize. They can be a "Hup two three four." They can forge a fiery army of a hundred languid men.

Realize now the power that your words command if you simply choose them wisely.

Liquid, flowing words are the choicest and the best, if language is regarded as music. But when it is considered as a picture, then there are rough words which are very telling, they make their mark.

Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.

Believing that your parents are always right.

You start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few good jokes.

I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something - a great deal - to do with how we live our lives.

I believe that should is one of the most damaging words in our language. Every time we use it, we are, in effect, saying that we are wrong, or we were wrong, or we're going to be wrong. I would like to take the word should out of our vocabulary forever and replace it with the word could. This word gives us a choice, and we're never wrong.