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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
Thing
Much
People
Openness
Honesty
Listening
Learned
Knew

More quotes by Audre Lorde

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Pain is an event ... Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain.
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You are the one that you are looking for.
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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.
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Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.
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If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.
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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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Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.
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So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.
Audre Lorde
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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.
Audre Lorde
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For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection, which is so feared by a patriarchal world.
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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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When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.
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I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.
Audre Lorde
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What I leave behind has a life of its own.
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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.
Audre Lorde
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I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.
Audre Lorde
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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)
Audre Lorde
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Art is not living. It is the use of living. The artist has the ability to take the living and use it in a certain way and produce art.
Audre Lorde
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I believe one of the hardest things you can do is conquer your fears, but if you have a goal, then it's your job to open up and let it be real no matter how scary it seems.
Audre Lorde
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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