Quotes from Muriel Rukeyser

Not all things are blest but the seeds of all things are blest.

Local images have one kind of reality. 'U.S. 1' will, I hope, have that kind and another, too. Poetry can extend the document.

The town of Gauley Bridge stands as a pattern for all those places where people are linked even in the middle of their suffering, where people fight against an evil condition so that other people need not go through the same fight.

My lifetime listens to yours.

the truth of a poem is its form and its content, its music and its meaning are the same.

Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling.

A world is to be fought for, sung, and built: Love must imagine the world.

I am haunted by interrupted acts, introspective as a leper, enchanted by a repulsive clew, a gross and fugitive movement of the limbs. Is this the love that shook the lights to flame?

The universe is made up of stories, not of atoms.

I think there is a choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.

Dreams are the sources of action, the meeting and the end, a resting place among the flight of things.

I lived in the first century of world wars. Most mornings I would be more or less insane.

The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.

I hope for quick, fluent copy and memorable pictures. The words would not 'describe' the pictures; the pictures would not 'illustrate' the words. Together, they would carry a stamp and tell a story.

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?The world would split open.

I hear the singing of the lives of women. The clear mystery, the offering, and the pride.

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed.

A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them.

Exchange is creation.

What three things can never be done? / Forget. Keep silent. Stand alone

The process of writing a poem represents work done on the self of the poet, in order to make form.

The actual world, not some fantastic structure that has nothing to do with reality, must provide the material for modern poetry.

I am working out the vocabulary of my silence.

We sit here, very different each from the other, until the passion arrives to give us our equality, to make us part of the play, to make the play part of us.