Quote

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

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
People
Openness
Honesty
Listening
Learned
Knew
Thing
Much

More quotes by Audre Lorde

Image
Our visions begin with our desires.
Audre Lorde
Image
We are powerful because we have survived
Audre Lorde
Image
One pays a lot, we all pay a lot, for awareness.
Audre Lorde
Image
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
Image
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.
Audre Lorde
Image
And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives.
Audre Lorde
Image
Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason.
Audre Lorde
Image
Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.
Audre Lorde
Image
Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief.
Audre Lorde
Image
Say what you have to say now! Don't wait until you're sending blips from the other side.
Audre Lorde
Image
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
Image
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
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
Pain is an event ... Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain.
Audre Lorde
Image
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
Audre Lorde
Image
Without community, there is no liberation.
Audre Lorde
Image
Guilt is not a response to anger it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action.
Audre Lorde
Image
You'd better name yourself, because, if you don't others will do it for you.
Audre Lorde
Image
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
Image
It is not the destiny of Black America to repeat white America's mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life.
Audre Lorde