Audre Lorde Quotes - Page 9

Quotes about:

• 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

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• Women are powerful and dangerous.

  Audre Lorde

  Powerful, Dangerous

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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".

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Women on trains
  have a life
  that is exactly livable
  the precision of days flashing past

  Audre Lorde

  Travel, Past, Precision

  Audre Lorde (2000). “The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde”, p.389, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

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

  Audre Lorde

  Arms, Throwing, Hold Me

  Audre Lorde (2017). “A Burst of Light: And Other Essays”, p.108, Courier Dover Publications

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• There are many lesbians and gay men trapped by their fear into silence and invisibility, and they exist in a dim valley of terror wearing nooses of conformity.

  Audre Lorde

  Gay, Men, Silence

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