Audre Lorde Quotes

In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction. — Audre Lorde

Poetry is not a luxury. — Audre Lorde

If I do not bring all of who I am to whatever I do, then I bring nothing, or nothing of lasting worth, for I have withheld my essence. — Audre Lorde

Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now. — Audre Lorde

When the desire for definition, self or otherwise, comes out of a desire for limitation rather than a desire for expansion, no true face can emerge. — Audre Lorde

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

Every woman I have ever known has made a lasting impression on my soul. — Audre Lorde

Stoicism and silence does not serve us nor our communities, only the forces of things as they are. — Audre Lorde

When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn't matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry. — Audre Lorde

Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge. — Audre Lorde

Battling racism and battling heterosexism and battling apartheid share the same urgency inside me as battling cancer. — Audre Lorde

Tenses are a way of ordering the chaos around time. — Audre Lorde

Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our futures. — Audre Lorde

Silence and invisibility go hand in hand with powerlessness ... — Audre Lorde

Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women. — Audre Lorde

Dark-bright fire lit eyes — Audre Lorde

Art is not living. It is the use of living. — Audre Lorde

If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they probably will not survive. — Audre Lorde

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. — Audre Lorde

We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. — Audre Lorde

Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away. — Audre Lorde

In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us. — Audre Lorde

Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy. — Audre Lorde

How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live
unblinded?
How much of this pain
can I use? — 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. — Audre Lorde

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

Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever. — Audre Lorde

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

It is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. — Audre Lorde

The cockroach
who is dying
and the woman
who is blind
agree
not to notice
each other's shame. — Audre Lorde

If you don't define yourself for yourself then you will be crushed into other's fantasies of you and eaten alive — Audre Lorde

If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed against the external conditions of our oppressions is not enough. — Audre Lorde

We're supposed to see "universal" love as heterosexual. What I insist upon in my work is that there is no such thing as universal love in literature. — Audre Lorde

The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of third world women leaves a serious gap within this conference ... — Audre Lorde

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

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

...oppression is as American as apple pie... — Audre Lorde

Women are powerful and dangerous. — Audre Lorde

Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it. — Audre Lorde

Hopefully, we can learn from the 60s that we cannot afford to do our enemies work by destroying each other. — Audre Lorde

The more I use my strength in the service of my vision the less I am afraid ... — Audre Lorde

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak. — Audre Lorde

I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior. — Audre Lorde

I am very, very happy for Alice Walker. — Audre Lorde

Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. — Audre Lorde

There is no such thing as a single issue struggle because we do not lead single issue lives. — Audre Lorde

What do we want from each other
after we have told our stories — Audre Lorde

There are many kinds of open ... Love is a word, another kind of open ... Take my word for jewel in your open light. — Audre Lorde

When patriarchy dismisses us, it encourages our murderers. — Audre Lorde

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. — Audre Lorde

We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love. — Audre Lorde

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. — Audre Lorde

How are you practicing what you preach - whatever you preach, and who is exactly listening? — Audre Lorde

We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not. — Audre Lorde

I cannot recall the words of my first poem but I remember a promise I made my pen never to leave it lying in somebody else's blood. — Audre Lorde

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

Anger is loaded with information and energy. — Audre Lorde

There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. — Audre Lorde

I am my best work - a series of road maps, reports, recipes, doodles, and prayers from the front lines. — Audre Lorde

We learn to work when we are tired, so we can learn to work when we are afraid. — Audre Lorde

I feel, therefore I can be free. — Audre Lorde

What I leave behind has a life of its own. — Audre Lorde

Without community, there is no liberation. — Audre Lorde

Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action. — Audre Lorde

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. — Audre Lorde

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. — Audre Lorde

I have died too many deaths
that were not mine. — Audre Lorde

I am a Black Lesbian Feminist Warrior Poet Mother, stronger for all my identities, and I am indivisible. — Audre Lorde

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

I do not want to be tolerated, or misnamed. I want to be recognized. — Audre Lorde

Art is not living. It is a use of living. The artist has the ability to take that living and use it in a certain way, and produce art. — Audre Lorde

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. — Audre Lorde

I am a post-mastectomy woman who believes our feelings need voice in order to be recognized, respected, and of use. — Audre Lorde

I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars. — Audre Lorde

In the recognition of loving lies the answer to despair. — Audre Lorde

Hatred is a death wish for the hated, not a life wish for anything else. — Audre Lorde

My fear of anger taught me nothing. — Audre Lorde

The love expressed between women is particular and powerful because we have had to love in order to live; love has been our survival. — Audre Lorde

Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. — Audre Lorde

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

Who I am is what fulfills me and fulfills the vision I have of the world. — Audre Lorde

Self-care is not about self-indulgence , it is about self-preservati on. — Audre Lorde

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

And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. — Audre Lorde

Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief. — Audre Lorde

You can not take down the master's house with the master's tools
Audre Lorde — Audre Lorde

The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation . — Audre Lorde

Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men. — Audre Lorde

Silence has never brought us anything of worth. — Audre Lorde

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

Change is the immediate responsibility of each of us, wherever and however we are standing, in whatever arena we choose. — Audre Lorde

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change. — Audre Lorde

My experience with people who tried to label me was that they usually did it to either dismiss me or use me. — Audre Lorde

Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill. — Audre Lorde

If I ever really sounded
I would rupture
your eardrums
or your heart. — Audre Lorde

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house — Audre Lorde

Some of our finest writers, organizers, artists, and scholars in the 60s as well as today, have been lesbian and gay, and history will bear me out. — Audre Lorde

The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those boundaries. — Audre Lorde

When times are hard, do something. If it works, do it some more. If it does not work, do something else. But keep going. — Audre Lorde

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing. — Audre Lorde