Muriel Rukeyser Quotes
-
Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness
-
The 'idea' for the poem, which may come as an image thrown against memory, as a sound of words that sets off a traveling of sound and meaning, as a curve of emotion (a form) plotted by certain crises of events or image or sound, or as a title which evokes a sense of inner relations; this is the first 'surfacing' of the poem. Then a period of stillness may follow.
-
What three things can never be done? / Forget. Keep silent. Stand alone
-
As we live our truths, we will communicate across all barriers, speaking for the sources of peace. Peace that is not lack of war, but fierce and positive.
-
What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.
-
In time of crisis, we summon up our strength. Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used.
-
If we look long enough and hard enough ... we will begin to see the connections that bind us together, and when we recognize those connections, we will begin to change the world.
-
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.