Muriel Rukeyser Quotes

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.

No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down-impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.

Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness

breathe in experience breathe out poetry

The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality.

American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict....We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the idea of perpetual warfare

The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.

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.

We are against war and the sources of war.
We are for poetry and the sources of poetry.