Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution

"Vous travaillez pour l'armee, madame?' (You are working for the army?), a Frenchwoman said to me early in the Vietnam war, on hearing I had three sons."

Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution

"Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other. The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement."

Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution

"Those who speak largely of the human condition are usually those most exempt from its oppressions - whether of sex, race, or servitude."

Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution

"There is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women's bodies by men. The woman's body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected."

Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution