Audre Lorde Quotes - Page 9

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• 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

  Stars, Opposites, Waiting

  Audre Lorde (2000). “The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde”, p.318, W. W. Norton & Company

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• For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it.

  Audre Lorde

  Truth, Writing, Language

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.43, Crossing Press

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• For within livin structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, our feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.

  Audre Lorde

  Men, Feelings, Poet

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.39, Crossing Press

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• The difference between poetry and rhetoric
  is being
  ready to kill
  yourself
  instead of your children.

  Audre Lorde

  Children, Differences, Poetry

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.106, Crossing Press

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• Women are powerful and dangerous.

  Audre Lorde

  Powerful, Dangerous

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• You loved people and you came to depend on their being there. but people died or changed or went away and it hurt too much. The only way to avoid that poin was not to love anyone, and not to let anyone get too close or too important. The secret of not being hurt like this again, I decided, was never depending on anyone, never needing, never loving.It is the last dream of children, to be forever untouched.

  Audre Lorde

  Dream, Hurt, Children

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• I have died too many deaths that were not mine.

  Audre Lorde

  Chaos, Mines, Died

  Audre Lorde (1995). “The Black Unicorn: Poems”, p.22, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I have always wanted to be both man and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts of my mother and father within/into me - to share valleys and mountains upon my body the way the earth does in hills and peaks.

  Audre Lorde

  Mother, Father, Men

  "Zami: A New Spelling of My Name". Book by Audre Lorde, 1982.

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• The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our own oppression as women.

  Audre Lorde

  Loyal, May, Oppression

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• The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. . . .

  Audre Lorde

  Spiritual, Lying, Erotic

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.53, Crossing Press

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• Sadomasochism is an institutionalized celebration of dominant/subordinate relationships. And, it prepares us either to accept subordination or to enforce dominance. Even in play, to affirm that the exertion of power over powerlessness is erotic, is empowering, is to set the emotional and social stage for the continuation of that relationship, politically, socially, and economically.

  Audre Lorde

  Emotional, Play, Empowering

  Audre Lorde (2017). “A Burst of Light: And Other Essays”, p.4, Courier Dover Publications

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• But, on the other hand, I get bored with racism too and recognize that there are still many things to be said about a Black person and a White person loving each other in a racist society.

  Audre Lorde

  Hands, White, Racism

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• what you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority

  Audre Lorde

  Voice, Suffering, Moral

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.132, Crossing Press

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• We have too often been expected to speak
  all things to all people and speak everyone else's position
  but our own.

  Audre Lorde

  People, Speak, Position

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• 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.

  Audre Lorde

  Fighting, Blow, Eggs

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

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• I have suckled the wolf's lip of anger and I have used it for illumination, laughter, protection, fire in places where there was no light, no food, no sisters, no quarter.

  Audre Lorde

  Laughter, Anger, Fire

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• But in a crunch, when all our asses are in the sling, it looks like it is easier to deal with the samenesses. When we deal with sameness only, we develop weapons that we use against each other when the differences become apparent. And we wipe each other out - Black men and women can wipe each other out - far more effectively than outsiders do.

  Audre Lorde

  Men, Differences, Black

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• Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change.

  Audre Lorde

  Hate, Grief, Anger

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.129, Crossing Press

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• It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.

  Audre Lorde

  Lying, Hands, Doe

  Audre Lorde (1995). “The Black Unicorn: Poems”, p.30, W. W. Norton & Company

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• How a diamond comes into a knot of flame How a sound comes into a word, coloured By who pays what for speaking. Some words are open. Love is a word another kind of open — As a diamond comes into a knot of flame I am black because I come from the earth's inside. Take my word for jewel in your open light.

  Audre Lorde

  Love Is, Light, Jewels

  "The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde".

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• 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.

  Audre Lorde

  Teaching, Keys, Survival

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

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• When you are a member of an out-group, and you challenge others with whom you share this outsider position to examine some aspect of their lives that distorts differences between you, then there can be a great deal of pain.

  Audre Lorde

  Pain, Differences, Challenges

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.86, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives.

  Audre Lorde

  Responsibility, Cry, Share

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.43, Crossing Press

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• I cannot shut you out the way I shut the others out, so maybe I can destroy you. Must destroy you?

  Audre Lorde

  Way, I Can

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.155, Crossing Press

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• Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason.

  Audre Lorde

  Mouths, Shapes, Flesh

  Audre Lorde (2000). “The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde”, p.59, W. W. Norton & Company

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