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I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.

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
Much
People
Openness
Honesty
Listening
Learned
Knew
Thing

More quotes by Audre Lorde

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The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.
Audre Lorde
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I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.
Audre Lorde
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All writers have periods when they stop writing, when they cannot write, and this is always painful and terrible because writing is like breathing.
Audre Lorde
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We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other.
Audre Lorde
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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.
Audre Lorde
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Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
Audre Lorde
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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
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The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.
Audre Lorde
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I am very, very happy for Alice Walker.
Audre Lorde
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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.
Audre Lorde
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For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it.
Audre Lorde
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We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.
Audre Lorde
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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
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Women are powerful and dangerous.
Audre Lorde
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Differences must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.
Audre Lorde
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The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.
Audre Lorde
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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
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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
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You will never be able to defend your city while shouting.
Audre Lorde
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The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
Audre Lorde