Audre Lorde quotes - page 3

Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. (Audre Lorde)
I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness. View quote
Audre Lorde
We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way. View quote
Audre Lorde
Learning not to crumple before these uncertainties fuels my resolve to print myself upon the texture of each day fully rather than forever. View quote
Audre Lorde
We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. View quote
Audre Lorde
I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell. View quote
Audre Lorde
The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. View quote
Audre Lorde
to that piece in each of us that refuses to be silent. View quote
Audre Lorde
In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men. View quote
Audre Lorde
The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower. View quote
Audre Lorde
Part of the lesbian consciousness is an absolute recognition of the erotic within our lives and, taking that a step further, dealing with the erotic not only in sexual terms. (Audre Lorde)
We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created. View quote
Audre Lorde
Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat. View quote
Audre Lorde
What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it? Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who can ever have power over me again? View quote
Audre Lorde
We recognize that all knowledge is mediated through the body and that feeling is a profound source of information about our lives. View quote
Audre Lorde
Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. View quote
Audre Lorde
Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism. View quote
Audre Lorde
Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests. View quote
Audre Lorde
It's possible to take that as a personal metaphor and then multiply it to a people, a race, a sex, a time. If we can keep this thing going long enough, if we can survive and teach what we know, we'll make it. View quote
Audre Lorde
Art is not living. It is the use of living. View quote
Audre Lorde
Some women wait for themselves around the next corner and call the empty spot peace but the opposite of living is only not living and the stars do not care. (Audre Lorde)
what you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority. View quote
Audre Lorde
You know how fighting fish do it? They blow bubbles and in each one of those bubbles is an egg and they float the egg up to the surface. They keep this whole heavy nest of eggs floating, and they're constantly repairing it. It's as if they live in both elements. View quote
Audre Lorde
But the question is a matter of the survival and the teaching. That's what our work comes down to. No matter where we key into it, it's the same work, just different pieces of ourselves doing it. View quote
Audre Lorde
Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away. View quote
Audre Lorde