Audre Lorde Quotes

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Audre Lorde

Profession : Poet

Birth : February 18, 1934

Our visions begin with our desires.

Audre Lorde

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

Audre Lorde

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

Audre Lorde

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

I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.

Audre Lorde

The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

Audre Lorde

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives.

Audre Lorde

But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.

Audre Lorde

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.

Audre Lorde

I can't really define it in sexual terms alone although our sexuality is so energizing why not enjoy it too?

Audre Lorde

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

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

I would like to do another piece of fiction dealing with a number of issues: Lesbian parenting, the 1960's, and interracial relationships in the Lesbian and Gay community.

Audre Lorde

In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men.

Audre Lorde

There are lesbians, God knows... if you came up through lesbian circles in the forties and fifties in New York... who were not feminist and would not call themselves feminists.

Audre Lorde

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

When we create out of our experiences, as feminists of color, women of color, we have to develop those structures that will present and circulate our culture.

Audre Lorde

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

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

The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.

Audre Lorde