Quote

Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.

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
Important
Evade
Succumb
Transcend
Deal
Deals
Pain

More quotes by Audre Lorde

Image
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
Image
Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.
Audre Lorde
Image
We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.
Audre Lorde
Image
Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.
Audre Lorde
Image
How a diamond comes into a knot of flame How a sound comes into a word, coloured By who pays what for speaking. Some words are open. Love is a word another kind of open — As a diamond comes into a knot of flame I am black because I come from the earth's inside. Take my word for jewel in your open light.
Audre Lorde
Image
Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
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
Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.
Audre Lorde
Image
The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children.
Audre Lorde
Image
There are no honest poems about dead women.
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
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
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
It's possible to take that as a personal metaphor and then multiply it to a people, a race, a sex, a time. If we can keep this thing going long enough, if we can survive and teach what we know, we'll make it.
Audre Lorde
Image
Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.
Audre Lorde
Image
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
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
Raising Black children — female and male — in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive. And in order to survive they must let go. This is what mothers teach — love, survival — that is, self-definition and letting go.
Audre Lorde
Image
Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.
Audre Lorde
Image
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