Audre Lorde Quotes - Page 8

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• Pain is an event ... Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain.

  Audre Lorde

  Pain, Hands, Suffering

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.171, Crossing Press

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• Differences must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.

  Audre Lorde

  Creativity, Differences, Sparks

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.111, Crossing Press

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• Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression.

  Audre Lorde

  Gay, Men, Issues

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• 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?

  Audre Lorde

  Dying, Faces, Accepting

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.12, Crossing Press

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• For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection, which is so feared by a patriarchal world.

  Audre Lorde

  Real, Desire, Connections

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.111, Crossing Press

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• I am not just a lesbian. I am not just a poet. I am not just a mother. Honor the complexity of your vision and yourselves.

  Audre Lorde

  Mother, Honor, Vision

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• What I leave behind has a life of its own.

  Audre Lorde

  Behinds

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• All writers have periods when they stop writing, when they cannot write, and this is always painful and terrible because writing is like breathing.

  Audre Lorde

  Writing, Breathing, Painful

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.16, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• We recognize that all knowledge is mediated through the body and that feeling is a profound source of information about our lives

  Audre Lorde

  Profound, Feelings, Body

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• Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me-so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her. And in that growing, we came to separation, that place where work begins.

  Audre Lorde

  Order, Different, Pieces

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• Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself.

  Audre Lorde

  Who I Am, Drug, Over You

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.147, Crossing Press

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• Every woman I have ever known has made a lasting impression on my soul.

  Audre Lorde

  Soul, Lasting Impressions, Made

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• Say what you have to say now! Don't wait until you're sending blips from the other side.

  Audre Lorde

  Waiting, Sides

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• We must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions that our dreams imply and so many of our old ideas disparage.

  Audre Lorde

  Dream, Ideas, Action

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.38, Crossing Press

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• Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action.

  Audre Lorde

  Guilt, Action, Response

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.130, Crossing Press

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• Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideasl The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves--along with the renewed courage to try them out.

  Audre Lorde

  Dream, Wings, Ideas

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• Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action.

  Audre Lorde

  Guilt, Way, Action

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.130, Crossing Press

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• 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.

  Audre Lorde

  Writing, Circles, Racism

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.85, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• . . . it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are-until the poem-nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.

  Audre Lorde

  Names, Ideas, Giving

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.36, Crossing Press

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• Perhaps...I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself--a Black woman warrior poet doing my work--come to ask you, are you doing yours?

  Audre Lorde

  Warrior, Black, Faces

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• 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.

  Audre Lorde

  Moving, Racism, Competition

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.48, Crossing Press

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• I agreed to take part in a New York University Institute for Humanities conference a year ago. . . .

  Audre Lorde

  New York, Heterosexuality Is, Years

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.110, Crossing Press

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• Art is not living. It is the use of living.

  Audre Lorde

  Life, Art, Inspire

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.96, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• 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.

  Audre Lorde

  Sex, Race, Long

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.31, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I soon discovered that if you keep your mouth shut, people are apt to believe you know everything, and they begin to feel freer and freer to tell you anything, anxious to show that they know something, too.

  Audre Lorde

  Believe, People, Mouths

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