Authors, Poets & Novelists Posters & Prints, “Ri...-”
for literature, language arts and social studies classrooms and home schoolers.

Anne Rice
née Howard Allen O'Brien
b. 10-4-1941; New Orleans, LA

Anne Rice, one of the best-selling authors in modern history, explored transformative processes through gothic, erotica and religious themed writing.

Anne Rice quote ~
• “My vampire novels and other novels I’ve written... are attempting to be transformative stories… All these novels involve a strong moral compass. Evil is never glorified in these books; on the contrary, the continuing battle against evil is the subject of the work. The search for the good is the subject of the work… ” - Essay on Earlier Works, 8-15-2007

Adrienne Rich
b. 6-16-1929; Baltimore, MD
d. 3-27-2012; Santa Cruz, CA

Poet and feminist Adrienne Cecile Rich has been called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century.”

Adrienne Rich quotes ~
• “It's exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful.”
• “A year, ten years from now, I'll remember this; not why, only that we were here like this, together.”
• “The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.”
• “When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”
• “In order to live a fully human life we require not only control of our bodies (though control is a prerequisite); we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the natural order, the corporeal grounds of our intelligence.”
• “One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else, what it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.”
• “The question always is there, ‘What kind of a privilege is it just to be able to feel purely and simply happy?’ But we can, and in spite of so much — and in spite of so much knowledge. And, for me, there’s always this issue of private and public happiness.”

Samuel Richardson
b. 8-19-1689; Mackworth, Derbyshire, England
d. 7-4-1761; Parson's Green, London

Samuel Richardson, a printer by trade, authored his first novel, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, after the age of 50. He was the master of the epistolary novel - a story told through correspondence between the characters, of “how to think and act justly and prudently in the common Concerns of Human Life.” He also wrote Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison (a Jane Austen favorite); Richardson's success was parodied by Henry Fielding with the novel Joseph Andrews.

Samuel Richardson quotes ~
• “Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.”
• “Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.”
• “If the education and studies of children were suited to their inclinations and capacities, many would be made useful members of society that otherwise would make no figure in it.”
• “Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated.”
• “The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.”
• “Vast is the field of Science. The more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know.”

Conrad Richter
b. 10-13-1890; Pine Grove, Pennsylvania
d. 10-30-1968

Pulitzer winner novelist Conrad Richter's work focused on the life of the American frontier. His books The Sea of Grass and The Light in the Forest were made into movies, the trilogy The Awakening Land was made into a three part TV ministries.

James Whitcomb Riley
b. 10-7-1849; Greenfield, IN
d. 7-22-1916

James Whitcomb Riley, known as the Hoosier Poet for his use of the Indiana dialect, wrote humorous and sentimental poetry, often regarded for children.

James Whitcomb Riley quotes ~
• “It is no use to grumble and complain. It's just as cheap and easy to rejoice; When God sorts out the weather and sends rain - Why, rain's my choice.”
• “The ripest peach is highest on the tree.”
• “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”
• ...“An' little Orphant Annie says,
when the blaze is blue,
An' the lamp-wick sputters,
an' the wind goes woo-oo!
An' you hear the crickets quit,
an' the moon is gray,
An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew
is all squenched away,--
You better mind yer parunts,
an' yer teachurs fond an' dear,
An' churish them 'at loves you,
an' dry the orphant's tear,
An' he'p the pore an' needy ones
'at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!”

• The Complete Poetical Works of James Whitcomb Riley

Rainer Maria Rilke
b. 12-4-1875; Prague, Czech Republic
d. 12-29-1926; Switzerland

Rainer Maria Rilke, considered one of the most important German language poets, also wrote in French. The Duino Elegies are his best known works to English language readers.

Rilke is also remembered for his association with the sculptor Auguste Rodin and psychoanalyst and author Lou Andreas-Salomé. He also participated in Stephane Mallarme's salon with intellectuals Yeats, Valéry, and Verlaine.

Rainer Maria Rilke quotes ~
• “The only journey is the one within.”
• “For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear, and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains to destroy us.” First Elegy
• “Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.”
• “Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.” Rilke's Letters on Cezanne, 1907
• “Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.”
• “If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.” Letter, 1903
• “Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.”
• “Death is the side of life which is turned away from us.”
• “Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.” Worpswede, 1903
• “May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”
• “Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.”
• “Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.”
• “The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth.”

• The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Arthur Rimbaud
b. 10-20-1854; Charleville, France
d. 11-10-1891; Marseille (cancer)

Poet Arthur Rimbaud, described as “an infant Shakespeare” by Victor Hugo, was an influence to the Symbolists, Dadaist and Surrealists.

In his youth he drank and had a stormy affair with poet Paul Verlaine, despite a strict Catholic upbring. Rimbaud then gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21, he spent the rest of his life seeking steady work and traveling.

Arthur Rimbaud quotes ~
• “I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.”
• “One evening I sat Beauty on my knees /And I found her bitter /And I reviled her.”
• “The first study for the man who wants to be a poet is knowledge of himself, complete: he searches for his soul, he inspects it, he puts it to the test, he learns it. As soon as he has learned it, he must cultivate it! I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one--and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the unknown! ....So the poet is actually a thief of Fire!”
• “Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.”

• Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, a Bilingual Edition