Adrienne Rich Quotes

Today I start a diary; it is against my usual habbits, but out of a clearly felt need.

You've got all these books on self help, getting to know yourself, doing the right thing, eating the so-called right foods, even down to what books you have on your shelves. People are encouraged to look to themselves first as opposed to being a part of society.

Go on thinking that you don't need to be read and you'll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won't feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.

'Xen,' to me, was a necessary excursion inward, into myself. 'Mutant' is a response to it and is more extroverted.

I felt at some point that I had nothing to lose, and [laughs] maybe I was wrong. I think, you know, there's always these little autobiographical secrets behind things. I think I was really attacking my earlier self, and this kind of pretentious figure.

I think to the degree writers are serious, there is a greater tendency for them to write to themselves, because they're trying to compose their own thoughts. They are trying to find out what is in their minds, which is the great mystery. Finding out who you are, what is in your head, and what kind of companion you are to yourself in the course of life. I do think people have very profound lives of which they say virtually nothing.

I rejected the word humorist for a long time because I thought that it meant you had, like, a cardigan sweater with patches on the elbows, but now I'm old and I do. I grew into that word. I think at heart, all this time, I've been a diarist. I'm not ashamed of it.

I am ashamed every day, and more ashamed the next. But I will spend the rest of my life in this living space writing these notes, this journal, recording my acts and reflections, finding some honor, some worth at the bottom of things. I want ten thousand pages that will stop the world.

You have no need to travel anywhere - journey within yourself. Enter a mine of rubies and bathe in the splendor of your own light.

How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to.

I've always said, rather glibly, that the message of my career has been about individualism, about getting to know yourself and taking responsibility, not just for what you do, but what you think.

I think I need to face what I could have been in order to understand and accept what I am.

Oh, very well, do you want to know why I really think you should keep a journal?" She nodded. "Because someday you're going to grow into yourself, and you will be as beautiful as you already are smart.

Think... of the world you carry within you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it.

Sometimes when we awaken from the bad dream of disowning ourselves, we think that the sojourn to self-discovery is a new one. But it is an ancient quest.

I think it is very useful to know ourselves, but when we start naming and labeling, that is dangerous, that gets problematic. It negates that things are always changing. Besides, it's hard to pin a label onto something that's always moving.

I'm interested in trying to explore what I think is the truth at a given time in my life, and part of the process of being honest is - in my mind - talking about the idea that you're watching a movie.

It takes time to understand yourself, to go inside yourself and to question yourself and really take yourself to task. That's self-expression.

I wish I could say confidently that pacing remains my weak point, if you could talk about your own stuff without sounding like you're self-obsessed. But I think you kind of have to be.

Think... of the world you carry within you.

No book can teach you about yourself, no psychologist, none of the professors or philosophers. What they can teach you is what they think you are or what they think you should be.

I don't know what to say about myself. I don't know myself (laughs). People say my humility but I believe we're all humble in our own way. I try to stay close to my family and friends.

Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.

In the quiet moments of your day, what do you think and do? When you are with your Self and no one else, how does life proceed for you? Who are you when you are alone? Self-creation is a Holy Experience. It is sacred. It is you, deciding Who You Are.

I've spent my life cultivating knowledge of myself. But the more I know myself, the more utterly mysterious I become.