Audre Lorde Quotes - Page 7

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• If you come as softly As wind within the trees You may hear what I hear See what sorrow sees. If you come as lightly As threading dew I will take you gladly Nor ask more of you. You may sit beside me Silent as a breath Only those who stay dead Shall remember death. And if you come I will be silent Nor speak harsh words to you. I will not ask you why, now. Or how, or what you do. We shall sit here, softly Beneath two different years And the rich earth between us Shall drink our tears.

  Audre Lorde

  Years, Wind, Two

  Audre Lorde (2000). “The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde”, p.31, W. W. Norton & Company

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• 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.

  Audre Lorde

  Our World, Differences, Empowering

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.112, Crossing Press

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• Some words live in my throat
  breeding like adders. Others know sun
  seeking like gypsies over my tongue
  to explode through my lips

  Audre Lorde

  Tongue, Sun, Lips

  Audre Lorde (1968). “The first cities”

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• I am Black because I come from the earth's inside
  now take my word for jewel in the open light.

  Audre Lorde

  Light, Jewels, Black

  Audre Lorde (2000). “The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde”, p.149, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Raising Black children — female and male — in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive. And in order to survive they must let go. This is what mothers teach — love, survival — that is, self-definition and letting go.

  Audre Lorde

  Ifs

  "Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches".

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• We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.

  Audre Lorde

  Self, Connections, Settling

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• 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

  Erotic, Steps, Recognition

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• When I speak of the erotic, then I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.

  Audre Lorde

  Dancing, Creative, Erotic

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.55, Crossing Press

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• When I hear the deepest truths I speak coming out of my mouth sounding like my mother's, even remembering how I fought against her, I have to reassess both our relationship as well as the sources of my knowing.

  Audre Lorde

  Mother, Knowing, Mouths

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.139, Crossing Press

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• So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.

  Audre Lorde

  Remember, Speak

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• I stand here as a black lesbian feminist, having been invited to comment within the only panel at this conference where the input of black feminists and lesbians is represented. What this says about the vision of this conference is sad, in a country where racism, sexism and homophobia are inseparable. . . .

  Audre Lorde

  Country, Heterosexuality Is, Racism

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

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• We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.

  Audre Lorde

  Creative, Understanding, Nurture

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• Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.

  Audre Lorde

  Inspiring, Harmony, Contradiction

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

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• If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color? What is the theory behind racist feminism?

  Audre Lorde

  Children, Color, White

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.112, Crossing Press

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• Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. it is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely toleration, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within the interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters

  Audre Lorde

  Creativity, Differences, Creative

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• Afraid is a country with no exit visas.

  Audre Lorde

  Country, Fear, Exit

  Audre Lorde (2000). “The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde”, p.329, W. W. Norton & Company

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

  Audre Lorde

  Women Empowerment, Littles, Next

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• I train myself for triumph by knowing it is mine no matter what.

  Audre Lorde

  Knowing, Triumph, Matter

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• As we come to know, accept, and explore our feelings, they will become sanctuaries and fortresses and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas-the house of difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action.

  Audre Lorde

  Meaningful, Ideas, Differences

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• Silence and invisibility go hand in hand with powerlessness.

  Audre Lorde

  Hands, Silence, Invisibility

  Audre Lorde (1997). “The Cancer Journals”

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• Who I am is what fulfills me and fulfills the vision I have of the world.

  Audre Lorde

  Self Esteem, Who I Am, Vision

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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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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• I became more courageous by doing the very things I needed to be courageous for-first, a little, and badly. Then, bit by bit, more and better. Being avidly-sometimes annoy-ingly-curious and persistent about discovering how others were doing what I wanted to do.

  Audre Lorde

  Firsts, Littles, Courageous

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• There is no Hierarchy of Oppressions

  Audre Lorde

  Hierarchy, Oppression

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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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