For two decades, I’ve maintained a list of quotes I like by poets, writers, and thinkers I find interesting. This post is part of that series. All posts in the series are organized alphabetically. Some poets and writers have their own dedicated pages.

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The art that moves me most is art that points out unfair or unethical practices in today’s society—especially practices which have become so routine that either they go unnoticed or they are assumed to be “normal.” — Erena Rae

Come / winter they walk outside into the snow, which makes an empire of erasure / a beautiful white shadow dreaming its way behind the closed lids of eyes. — Doug Ramspeck

Nobody wants to make anybody else uncomfortable. Nobody wants to step out … and say, What you have done is unacceptable. — Claudia Rankine

If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Open this gate. Tear down this wall. — Ronald Reagan

We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother’s blood before she herself is born, and this pulse is the thread of blood that runs all the way back through the grandmothers to the first mother. — Layne Redmond

sometimes, we need a reason / To die and sometimes we need only an excuse: / A lover and then nothing like a lover: a car keyed: / The doors rusting in the salt and swagger of a bay — Roger Reeves

Years ago before a massage I’d tell / the therapist there’s a good chance I’ll cry / because my divorce now thirty years on / lives where the trapezius and rhomboid / overlap. — Lisa Rhoades

There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice. But I do know that art—in my own case the art of poetry—means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage. — Adrienne Rich

There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice. But I do know that art—in my own case the art of poetry—means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage. — Adrienne Rich

We were nostalgic for dirt, / the smell of ruin. / Old things that relinquish their grip. / And we knew, then, / the burden of the former gods— / not the making. The smiting — Laura Ring

From those centuries we human beings bring with us / The simple solutions and songs, / The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies / All in service to a simple idea: / That we can make a house called tomorrow. — Alberto Álvaro Ríos

The jackrabbits and the Tucson Mountains — / We love them, not easily but fiercely, fiercely / In the new way we have had to find. / We love them as who we are now. / We love because that’s what’s left. — Alberto Álvaro Ríos

When something explodes, / Turn exactly opposite from it and see what there is to see. / The loud will take care of itself, and everyone will be able to say / What happened in that direction. But who is looking / The other way? — Alberto Álvaro Ríos

& the world / was suddenly made / of bridges over low / rivers & these poems / your aviary — Anthony Robinson

Here in the wild oregano / We can’t touch the wind, we / Can’t even see each other. — Anthony Robinson

Poetry fits into the world for people who find it important, for people who cling to it, who hold onto it. In the long run, it is essential to me because I always find things I’m going back to, um, you know, that will buoy me. It seems like a weird cliché thing to say, like, “Oh, it helps me survive”—but—you know—it really does. — Anthony Robinson

White Supremacy is a pervasive system and anybody can be inured to that system. — Anthony Robinson

It’s incredible; You should see it- / But I don’t want you here / And it is mine. — Bailey Rodfield

Is it really so / that the one I love is everywhere? — Rumi

My heart has become a bird / Which searches in the sky. — Rumi

Ours is not a caravan of despair. — Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing / and rightdoing there is a field. / I’ll meet you there. — Rumi

The cure for the pain is in the pain. — Rumi

Until you’ve kept your eyes / and your wanting still for fifty years, / you don’t begin to cross over from confusion. — Rumi

Thanks be / to god—again— / for extractable elements / which are not / carriers of pain, / for this periodic / table at which / the self-taught / salvagers disassemble / the unthinkable / to the unthought. — Kay Ryan

Unborn kittens wait for news / from the water / in their mother’s belly. — Mykyta Ryzhykh