Quote

I know the anger lies inside of me like I know the beat of my heart and the taste of my spit. It is easier to be furious than to be yearning. Easier to crucify myself in you than to take on the threatening universe of whiteness by admitting that we are worth wanting each other.

Audre Lorde

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Beats
Whiteness
Universe
Admitting
Take
Anger
Furious
Heart
Lies
Spit
Like
Taste
Yearning
Worth
Threatening
Easier
Wanting
Inside
Beat
Crucify
Lying

More quotes by Audre Lorde

Image
I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.
Audre Lorde
Image
Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.
Audre Lorde
Image
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never allow us to bring about genuine change.
Audre Lorde
Image
From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sizes and colors and sexualities and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression.
Audre Lorde
Image
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
Image
I was going to die, if not sooner, then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.
Audre Lorde
Image
What I leave behind has a life of its own.
Audre Lorde
Image
I soon discovered that if you keep your mouth shut, people are apt to believe you know everything, and they begin to feel freer and freer to tell you anything, anxious to show that they know something, too.
Audre Lorde
Image
It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.
Audre Lorde
Image
Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.
Audre Lorde
Image
Divide and conquer must become define and empower.
Audre Lorde
Image
It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.
Audre Lorde
Image
We have too often been expected to speak all things to all people and speak everyone else's position but our own.
Audre Lorde
Image
What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman's face?
Audre Lorde
Image
If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.
Audre Lorde
Image
To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.
Audre Lorde
Image
Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.
Audre Lorde
Image
The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of third world women leaves a serious gap within this conference. . . .
Audre Lorde
Image
Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.
Audre Lorde
Image
The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.
Audre Lorde