Quote

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

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Audre Lorde
Age: 58 †
Born: 1934
Born: February 18
Died: 1992
Died: November 17
Essayist
Feminist
Librarian
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Audre Geraldine Lorde
Felt
Gay
Feelings
Lonely
Light
Keys
Truth
Fine
Remember
Hell
Young
Feeling
Literature
Purely
Black
Racism

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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.
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I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.
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The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself.
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... it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.
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Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.
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I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.
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Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.
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The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.
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If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core -- the fountain -- of our power, our womanness we give up the future of our worlds. (From Poetry is Not a Luxury)
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I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.
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I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do.
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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.
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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. . . .
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What I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid?
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I am very, very happy for Alice Walker.
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Say what you have to say now! Don't wait until you're sending blips from the other side.
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I am a Black Lesbian Feminist Warrior Poet Mother, stronger for all my identities, and I am indivisible.
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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.
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Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.
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I train myself for triumph by knowing it is mine no matter what.
Audre Lorde