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. There is no such thing as bad art.
Muriel Rukeyser

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.
Muriel Rukeyser

Exchange is creation.
Muriel Rukeyser

However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.
Muriel Rukeyser

I hear the singing of the lives of women. They clear mystery, the offering, and pride.
Muriel Rukeyser

I think there is 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.
Muriel Rukeyser

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

In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no penalty for writing poems. They say this. This is the penalty.
Muriel Rukeyser

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.
Muriel Rukeyser

Our poems will have failed if our readers are not brought by them beyond the poems.
Muriel Rukeyser


The journey is my home.
Muriel Rukeyser

The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.
Muriel Rukeyser

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
Muriel Rukeyser

Those who speak of our culture as dead or dying have a quarrel with life, and I think they cannot understand its terms, but must endlessly repeat the projection of their own desires.
Muriel Rukeyser