Muriel Rukeyser

“Poetry can extend the document.”

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”

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

“Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.”

“My lifetime listens to yours.”

“To be a Jew in the twentieth century is to be offered a gift. If you refuse, wishing to be invisible, you choose death of the spirit, the stone insanity.”

“If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.”

“The creative imagination is not a luxury, and it is not a mere ornament. It is a vital necessity of the human spirit.”

“No one is free until we are all free.”

“In this moment, when we are discovering our history, we are also discovering how we can change it.”

“A poem is not a thing but a process.”

“Wherever we are, it is but a stage on the way to somewhere else, and whatever we do, however well we do it, it is only a preparation for something else that lies ahead.”