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What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence.

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
Dies
Words
Fear
Sicken
Stills
Tyrannies
Still
Swallow
Need
Attempt
Needs
Tyranny
Make
Silence

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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.
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Our visions begin with our desires.
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The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation.
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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. . . .
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Whenever a conscious Black woman raises her voice on issues central to her existence, somebody is going to call her strident, because they don't want to hear about it, nor us. I refuse to be silenced and I refuse to be trivialized, even if I do not say what I have to say perfectly.
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I am very, very happy for Alice Walker.
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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.
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Women are powerful and dangerous.
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I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.
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I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.
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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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In the recognition of loving lies the answer to despair.
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Perhaps...I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself--a Black woman warrior poet doing my work--come to ask you, are you doing yours?
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The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.
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Without community, there is no liberation.
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Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.
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There are no honest poems about dead women.
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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.
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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.
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I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
Audre Lorde